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I,  MARY  MacLANE 


A  DIJRY  OF  HUMAN  DAYS 


BY 

MARY  MacLANE 

AUTHOR  OF   "the   STORY  OF   MARY  MACLANE' 


NEW  YORK 
FREDERICK  A.  STOKES  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


Copyright,  igi^i  hy 
Frederick  A.  Stokes  Company 


All  rights  reserved,  incliiding  that  of  translation 
into  foreign  languages. 


APR  25  1917 


©CI,A462110 


To  M     T 

these  Live  Fruits 

Jrom  the  Withered  Garden 

X                                                                                                                  1 

I,  MARY  MacLANE 


■^ 


I,  Mary  MacLane 


A  crucible  of  my  own  making 

To-day 

IT  is  the  edge  of  a  somber  July  night  in  this 
Butte-Montana. 
The  sky  is  overcast.    The  nearer  mountains 
are  gray-melancholy. 
And  at  this  point  I  meet  Me  face  to  face. 
I  am  Mary  MacLane:    of  no   importance  to  the 
wide  bright  world  and  dearly  and  damnably  im- 
portant to  Me. 

Face  to  face  I  look  at  Me  with  some  hatred,  with 
despair  and  with  great  intentness. 
I  put  Me  in  a  crucible  of  my  own  making  and  set 
it  in  the  flaming  trivial  Inferno  of  my  mind.    And 
I  assay  thus: 

I  am  rare — I  am  in  some  ways  exquisite. 
I  am  pagan  within  and  without. 
I  am  vain  and  shallow  and  false. 
I  am  a  specialized  being,  deeply  myself. 
I  am  of  woman-sex  and  most  things  that  go  with 
that,  wit|i  some  other  pointes. 
I  am  dynamic  but  devasted,  laid  waste  in  spirit. 
Fm  like  a  leopard  and  Tm  like  a  poet  and  Vm  like 

I 


A  crucible  of  my  own  making 


a  religieuse  and  Fm  like  an  outlaw. 
I  have  a  potent  weird  sense  of  humor — a  saving 
and  a  demorahzing  grace. 

I  have  brain,  cerebration — not  powerful  but  fine 
and  of  a  remarkable  quality. 
I  am  scornful-tempered  and  I  am  brave. 
I  am  slender  in  body  and  someway  fragile  and  firm- 
fleshed  and  sweet. 

I  am  oddly  a  fool  and  a  strange  complex  liar  and  a 
spiritual  vagabond. 

I  am  strong,  individual  in  my  falseness:   wavering, 
faint,  fanciful  in  my  truth. 
I  am  eternally  self-conscious  but  sincere  in  it. 
I  am  ultra-modern,  very  old-fashioned:    savagely 
incongruous. 

I  am  young,  but  not  very  young. 
1  am  wistful — I  am  infamous. 
In  brief,  I  am  a  human  being. 

I  am  presciently  and  analytically  egotistic,  with 
some  arresting  dead-feeling  genius. 
And  were  I  not  so  tensely  tiredly  sane  I  would  say 
that  I  am  mad. 

So  assayed  I  begin  to  write  this  book  of  myself,  to 
show  to  myself  in  detail  the  woman  who  is  inside 
me.  It  may  or  it  mayn't  show  also  a  type,  a  uni- 
versal Eve-old  woman.  If  it  is  so  it  is  not  my 
purport.     I  sing  only  the  Ego  and  the  individual. 


A  crucible  of  my  own  making 


So  does  in  secret  each  man  and  woman  and  child 
who  breathes,  but  is  afraid  to  sing  it  aloud.  And 
mostly  none  knows  it  is  that  he  does  sing.  But  it 
is  the  only  strength  of  each.  A  bishop  serving 
truly  and  tirelessly  the  poor  of  his  diocese  serves 
a  strong  vanity  and  ideal  of  the  Ego  in  himself. 
A  starving  sculptor  who  lives  in  and  for  his  own 
dreams  is  an  Egotist  equally  with  the  bishop.  And 
both  are  Egotists  equally  with  me. 
Egotist,  not  egoist,  is  my  word:  it  and  not  the 
idealized  one  is  the  *  winged  word.' 
It  is  made  of  glow  and  gleam  and  splendor,  that 
Ego.     I  would  be  its  votary. 

So  I  write  me  this  book  of  Me — my  Soul,  my  Heart, 
my  sentient  Body,  my  magic  Mind:  their  poten- 
tialities and  contradictions. 

— there  is  a  Self  in  each  human  one  which  lives  and 
has  its  sweet  vain  someway-frightful  being  not  in 
depths  and  not  in  surfaces  but  Just  Beneath  The 
Skin.  It  is  the  Self  one  keeps  for  oneself  alone. 
It  is  the  Essence  of  soul  and  bones.  It  is  the  slyest 
subtlest  thing  in  human  scope.  It  is  the  loneliest: 
tragically  lonely.  It  is  long,  long  isolation — 
beautiful,  terrifying,  barbarous,  shameful,  trivial  to 
points  of  madness,  ever-present,  infinitely  intriguing 
to  oneself,  passionately  hidden:  hidden  forever  and 
forever — 


A  crucible  oj  my  own  making 


It  is  my  aim  to  write  out  that  in  the  pages  of  this 
Me-book:  no  depths  save  as  they  come  up  and  touch 
that,  no  surfaces  save  as  they  sink  skin-deep.  Only 
the  flat  unglowing  bloody  Self  Just  Beneath  My 
Skin. 

I  shall  fail  in  it,  partly  because  my  writing  skill  is 
unequal  to  some  nicenesses  in  the  task,  but  mostly 
because  I  am  not  very  honest  even  with  myself, 
ril  come  someway  near  it. 


Half  inevitably,  balj  by  choice 


To-morrow 

HALF  INEVITABLY,  half  by  choice,  I  write 
this  book  now. 
I  am    at   a   lowering    impatient   shoulder- 
shrugging  life-point  where  I  must  express  myself  or 
lose  myself  or  break. 
And  I  am  quite  alone  as  I  live  my  life. 
And  I  am  unhappy — a  scornful  unhappiness  not  of 
bitter    positive    grief   which    admits    of   engulfing 
luxuries    of  sorrow,    but    of   muffled    unrests    and 
tortures  of  knowing  I  fit  in  nowhere,  that  I  drift — 
drift — and  it  brings  an  unbearable  dread,  always 
more  and  more  dread,  into  days  and  into  wakeful 
nights. 
And  writing  it  turns  the  brunt  of  it  a  little  away 

from  me. 

And  to  write  is  the  thing  I  most  love  to  do. 
And  I  myself  am  the  most  immediate  potent  topic 
I  can  find  in  my  knowledge  to  write  on:  the  biggest, 
the  littlest,  the  broadest,  the  narrowest,  the  loveliest, 
the  hatefulest,  the  most  colorful,  the  most  drab,  the 
most  mystic,  the  most  obvious,  and  the  one  that 
takes  me  farthest  as  a  writer  and  as  a  person. 
I  write  myself  when  I  write  the  thoughts  smoulder- 
ing in  me  whether  they  be  of  Death,  of  Roses,  of 
Christ's  Mother,  of  Ten-penny  Nails. 


Half  inevitablyy  half  by  choice 


One's  thoughts  are  one's  most  crucial  adventures. 
Seriously  and  strongly  and  intently  to  contemplate 
doing  murder  is  everyway  more  exciting,  more 
romantic,  more  profoundly  tragic  than  the  murder 
done. 

I  unfold  myself  in  accursed  and  precious  written 
thoughts.  I  cast  the  reflections  of  my  inner  selves 
on  the  paper  from  the  insolent  mirror  of  my  Mind. 
— my  Mind — it  is  so  free — 

My  Soul  is  not  free:  God  hung  a  string  of  curses, 
like  a  little  manacling  chain,  round  its  neck  long 
and  long  ago.  Always  I  feel  it.  My  Heart  is  not 
free  for  it  is  dead:  in  a  listless  way  and  a  trivial 
way,  dead.  And  my  Body — it  is  free  but  has  a 
seeming  of  something  wasted  and  useless  like  a 
dinner  spread  out  on  a  table  uneaten  and  growing 
cold. 

— but  my  free  Mind — 

Though  I  were  shut  fast  in  a  prison:  though  I  were 
strapped  in  an  electric  chair:  though  I  were  gnawed 
and  decayed  by  leprosy:  I  still  could  think,  with 
thoughts  free  as  gold-drenched  outer  air,  thoughts 
delicate-luminous  as  young  dawn,  thoughts  facile, 
seductive,  speculative,  artful,  evil,  sly,  sublime. 
You  might  cut  off  my  two  hands:  but  you  could 
not  keep  me  from  remembering  the  Sad  Gray  Loveli- 
ness of  the  Sea  when  the  Rain  beats,  beats,  beats 


Half  inevitably,  half  by  choice 


upon  it. 

You  might  admonish  me  by  driving  a  red-hot  spike 
between  my  two  white  shoulders :  but  you  could  not 
by  that  influence  my  Thoughts — you  could  not  so 
much  as  change  their  current. 

I  am  intently  aware  of  my  Mind  from  moment  to 
moment — all  the  passing  life-moments.     The  aware- 
ness is  a  troubled  power,  a  heavy  burden  and  a 
wild  enchantment. — 
Also  what  I  feel  I  write. 

I  am  my  own  law,  my  own  oracle,  my  own  one  inti- 
mate friend,  my  own  guide  though  I  guide  me  to  dead- 
walls,  my  own  mentor,  my  own  foe,  my  own  lover. 
I  am  in  age  one-and-thirty,  a  smouldering-flamed 
period  which  feels  the  wings  of  the  Youth-bird 
beating  strong  and  violent  for  flight — half-ready  to 
fly  away. 

I  am  not  a  charming  person.     Quite  seventy  singly- 
used  adjectives  would  better  fit  me. 
But  I  have  some  charm  of  youth,  and  a  charm  of 
sex,  and  a  charm  of  inteflect  and  intuition,  and 
some  charms  of  personality. 

I  have  a  perfervid  appreciation  of  those  things  in 
other  persons.  And  my  steel  has  sometime  struck 
fire  from  their  flint. 

But  always  my  steel  has  turned  back  drearily  yet 
strongly  to  itself. 


8  A  twisted  moral 


To-morrow 

IF  I  should  meet  God  to  know  and  speak  to  the 
first  thing  but  one  I  should  ask  him  would  be, 
*What  was  your  idea,  God,  in  making  me?' 
I  can  believe  he  had  some  Purpose  in  it. 
I'm  in  most  ways  a  devilish  person.  There's  seven- 
fold more  evil  than  good  in  me.  It  is  evil  of  a  mixed 
and  menacing  kind,  the  kind  that  goes  dressed  in 
brave  and  beauty-tinted  clothes  and  is  sane  and 
sound.  While^the  good  in  me  is  ill  and  forlorn  and 
nervously  afraid — a  something  of  tear-blurred  eyes 
and  trembling  fingers. 

Yet  God  has  made  many  things  less  plausible  than 
me.  He  has  made  sharks  in  the  ocean,  and  people 
who  hire  children  to  work  in  their  mills  and  mines, 
and  poison  ivy  and  zebras — 

— and  he  has  made  besides  a  Wonder  of  things: 
Thin  Pink  Mountain  Dawns,  Young  English  Poets, 
Hydrangeas  in  the  sudden  Blue  of  their  first  Bloom, 
human  Singing  Voices, — more  things,  always  more — 
When  I  think  of  them  all  a  joyous  thrill  breaks  over 
me  like  a  little  frenzied  wave.  It  is  delirium-of-bliss 
to  feel  oneself  living  though  shadows  be  pitch-black. 
God  has  a  Purpose  in  making  everything,  I  think. 
I  am  half-curious  about  the  Purpose  that  goes  with 
me.    He  might  have  made  me  for  his  own  amuse- 


A  twisted  moral  9 

ment.     He  might  have  made  me  to  discipline  my 

Soul  with  some  blights  and  goads  or  to  punish  it  for 

bacchanalian  ease  and  pleasure  in  the  long-distant 

centuries-old  past.     He  might  have  made  me  to 

season  or  scourge  other  lives,  as  I  may  touch  them, 

with  Mary-Mac-Lane-ness.    He  might  have  made 

me  to  point  a  twisted  moral. 

I  muse  about  it  with  doubts. 

But  if  I  knew  my  Purpose  I  belike  would  not  swerve 

a  hair's-breadth  from  my  own  course  which  is  an 

unhallowedly  selfish  one. 

If  I  could  myself  see  a  way  of  truth  I  would  walk  in 

it.    I  have  it  in  me  to  worship.    1  long  to  worsnip. 

And  I  am  game,  wearily  and  coldly  game:    when 

I  start  I  go  on  through  to  the  end. 

But  I  see  no  way  of  truth — none  for  me.  And  God 

is  eternally  absent  and  reticent.    So  I  go  on  in  the 

way  where  I  find  myself.    And  muse  about  it.    And 

damn  it  faintly  as  I  make  nothing  of  it. 


10  Everyday  and  to-morrow 


To-morrow 

ALOOFLY  I  live  in  this  Butte  in  the  outward 
/—X       role  of  a  family  daughter  with  no  responsi- 
'^     ^     bilities. 

This  Butte  is  an  incongruous  living-place  for  me. 
And  I  have  not  one  human  friend  in  it — no  kindli- 
ness. And  Nature  in  her  perplexingest  mood  would 
not  of  herself  have  cast  me  as  a  family  daughter. 
Three  things  have  kept  me  thus  for  four  years  past: 
that  nothing  has  called  me  out  of  it:  a  slight  family 
pressure  like  a  tiny  needle-point  which  pierces  only 
if  one  moves :  and  to  stay  thus  is  presently  the  line 
of  least  resistance. 

Unless  impelled  to  violent  action  by  a  violent  rea- 
son— hke  love  or  hatred  or  jealousy  or  a  baby  or 
humiliated  pride  or  rowelling  ambition — a  woman 
follows  the  physical  line  of  least  resistance.  I  have 
followed  it  these  years  with  outward  acquiescence 
and  inward  rages — languid  rages  which  lay  me  waste. 
The  years  and  acquiescences  and  rages  have  built 
up  a  mood  which  compasses  me,  drives  me,  damns 
me  and  lifts  me  up. 

It  is  a  forceful  mood,  though  I  am  not  myself  forceful. 
This  mood  is  this  book. — 

I  live  an  immoral  life.  It  is  immoral  because  it  is 
deadly  futile.    All  my  Tissues  of  body,  soul,  mind 


Everyday  and  to-morrow  1 1 

and  heart  are  wasting,  decaying,  wearing  down, 
minute  by  minute,  hour  by  hour,  day  by  day:  with 
no  return  to  me  or  to  my  Hfe,  nor  to  anything  human 
or  divine. 

It  makes  me  dread  my  life  and  myself. 
I  do  not  quite  know  why. 

But  to  be  an  ardent  pickpocket  or  an  eager  harlot 
would  feel  honester. 

My  Everyday  goes  like  this:  I  waken  in  the  morn- 
ing and  lie  listless  some  minutes  with  drooping 
eyelids.  I  look  at  a  gilt-and-blue  bar  of  morning 
light  which  slants  palely  in  at  one  window  and  at 
a  melting-gold  triangle  of  sun  which  shows  at  the 
other  window  on  the  red  brick  wall  of  the  house 
next  to  this.  Then  I  say  *  another  day,'  and  I 
kick  off  bed-covers  with  one  foot  and  slide  out  of 
my  narrow  bed,  and  into  blue  slippers,  and  out  of  a 
thin  nightgown,  and  into  peignoir  or  bathrobe. 
I  twist  and  flatten  and  gather  up  my  tangled  hair 
and  push  some  amber  pins  through  it.  And  I  go 
into  a  respectable  green-and-gray  bathroom  and 
draw  a  bath  and  get  into  it.  I  splash  in  brief  swift 
soapsuds,  and  go  under  a  sudden  heroic  icy  cold 
shower,  and  dry  me  with  a  scourging  towel.  Then 
I  go  back  into  the  blue-white  bed-room  and  get  into 
clothes,  feminine  thin  under-garments  and  a  nun- 
like frock. 


12  Everyday  and  to-morrow 

I  look  in  my  mirror.  Some  days  I'm  a  delicately 
beautiful  girl.  Other  days  I'm  a  very  plain  woman. 
One's  physical  attractiveness  is  a  matter  of  one's 
mental  chemistry. 

I  say  to  Me  in  the  mirror,  *It's  you-and-me,  Mary 
MacLane,  and  another  wasting  damning  To-morrow. 
"To-morrow  and  to-morrow  and  to-morrow 

Creeps  in  this  petty  pace  from  day  to  day."' 
A  haunting  decadence  is  in  that  To-morrow  thought. 
And  always  the  To-morrow  thought  comes  out  of 
my  morning  mirror.  I  dwell  on  it  awhile,  till  my 
gray  eyes  and  my  lips  and  my  teeth  and  my  forehead 
are  tired  of  it,  and  make  nothing  new  of  it. 
I  jerk  the  flat  scollop  of  hair  at  one  side  of  my  fore- 
head and  turn  away.  I  open  door  and  windows 
wider  for  the  blowing-through  of  breezes.  And  I 
wander  down-stairs.  It  is  half-after  nine  or  half- 
after  ten.  I  go  into  the  clean  empty  clock-ticking 
kitchen  and  cook  my  breakfast.  It  is  a  task  full  of 
hungry  plaisance  and  pleasantness.  I  make  a  Brit- 
ish-feeling breakfast  of  tea  and  marmalade  and  little 
squares  of  toast  and  pink-and-tan  rashers  of  bacon 
and  two  delightful  eggs.  Up  to  the  moment  of 
broaching  the  eggs  the  morning  has  an  ancient  same- 
ness with  other  mornings.  But  eggs,  though  I've 
eaten  them  every  day  for  quite  five-and-twenty 
years,  are  always  a  fascinating  novelty. 


Everyday  and  to-morrow  13 

They  are  delicious  in  my  breakfast.  So  are  the 
squares  of  toast  and  the  bacon-rashers  and  the  tea 
and  marmalade.  When  I've  done  with  them  I  lay 
down  my  napkin  by  my  cup,  light  a  cigarette,  breathe 
a  puff  or  two  from  it  and  feel  contentedly  aware  that 
my  brain  has  gone  to  rest  in  sweet  tranquillity  with 
my  breakfast.  When  my  brain  is  in  my  head  it 
analyzes  the  soul  out  of  my  body,  the  gleam  out  of 
my  gray  eyes,  the  savor  out  of  my  life,  the  human 
taste  off  my  tongue.  That  post-breakfast  moment 
is  the  only  peace-moment  I  know  in  my  day  and  in 
my  life. 

Having  puffed  away  the  cigarette  and  read  bits  of  a 
morning  paper  I  then  prove  me  arrantly  middle- 
class  by  contemplating  washing  my  breakfast  dishes. 
I  am  middle-class,  quite,  from  the  Soul  outward. 
But  it  is  not  specially  apparent — one's  tastes  and 
aspirations  flit  garbledly  far  and  wide.  But  a 
tendency  to  wash  one's  dishes  after  eating  one's 
breakfast  feels  conclusively  and  pleasantly  middle- 
class.  Not  that  I  do  always  wash  them,  but  always 
I  think  of  it  with  the  inclination  to  do  it. 
I  sit  on  the  shaded  front  veranda  in  the  summer 
noon-day  and  look  away  south  at  the  blue  Highlands, 
ever  snow-peaked:  or  east  at  the  near  towering 
splendid  grim  wall  of  the  arid  Rockies  which 
separates  this  Butte  from  New  York,  from  London, 


14  Everyday  and  to-morrow 

— ^the  Spain-castles — the  Pyramids — the  Isle  of 
Lesbos:  or  south-west  beyond  house-tops  at  some 
foothills  above  which  hangs  a  fairy  veil  made  by 
melting  together  a  Lump  of  Gold  and  an  Apricot 
and  spreading  it  thin. 

Then  restlessly  I  go  into  the  house  and  up  to  my 
room.  I  put  it  in  order — in  prim,  prim  immaculate 
order.  One  marked  phase  of  mine  is  of  some  wanton 
creature — a  maenad,  a  mental  Amazon,  a  she-imp. 
But  playing  opposite  to  that  is  another — that  of  a 
New-England  spinster  steel-riveted  to  certain  neat 
ferociously-orderly  habits.  A  stray  thread  on  my 
blue  rug  hurts,  hurts  me  until  I  pick  it  up.  Dust 
around  my  room  gives  me  a  nervous  pain,  a  piteous 
gnawing  grief-of-the-senses,  until  I've  removed  it. 
And  my  chastened-Iooking  bed — after  I've  turned 
over  its  tufted  mattress  and  *made'  it,  smooth  and 
white  and  crisp  and  soft — how  the  fibers  of  me  would 
writhe  should  anyone  sit  on  it.  But  no  one  sits  on  it. 
And  I  myself  sooner  than  press  one  fmger-tip  down 
into  its  perfectness  would  sell  my  body  to  a  Balkan 
soldier  for  four  dimes :  it  is  that  way  I  feel  about  it. 
My  bed  miLSt  be  kept  perfect  till  the  moment  I  slip 
into  it  at  night  to  float  under  the  dream-worlds. 
Then  maybe  I  pull  a  soft  black  hat  down  over  my 
hair  and  draw  on  gloves  and  go  out  into  the  gray- 
paved  streets  for  a  longish  walk.    Or  maybe  the  day 


Everyday  and  to-morrow  15 

is  humidly  hot.  Then  I  don't  go  but  stay  in  the 
blue-white  room  and  mend  a  bit  of  torn  lingerie  or 
a  handkerchief  or  a  silk  stocking  or  a  petticoat. 
Or  I  take  books  and  dig  out  some  Greek — Homer  or 
a  Sapphic  fragment — very  laboriously  but  marvel- 
ling that  I  can  do  it  at  all:  the  first  things  one  forgets 
being  the  last  things  one  learned  at  school.  Or  I 
read  an  English  or  a  French  philosopher,  or  a  trans- 
lated Tolstoi,  or  a  bit  of  Balzac  novel,  or  some  bits 
of  Dickens-books  with  which  latter  I  am  long 
famihar  and  long  enamored  for  the  restful  falseness 
of  their  sentiment  and  the  pungent  appetizing  charm 
of  their  villains. 

And  betweenwhiles  I  think  and  think. 
Then  it's  dinnertime  and  I  perhaps  change  into  the 
other  nunlike  dress,  and  nibble  some  dinner  with  no 
appetite,  and  talk  with  the  assembled  small  family 
in  a  vein  and  tone  of  life-long  insincerity.  When 
in  family-circle-ness  I've  had  to  hide  my  true  self 
as  if  behind  a  hundred  black  veils  since  the  age  of 
two  years.  It  would  be  a  poignant  effort  now  to 
show  any  of  it  at  the  family  dinners,  which  is  the 
only  meeting-time.  The  one  easy  way  is  to  be 
comprehensively  insincere  at  the  dinners  where 
with  no  appetite  I  nibble.  None  there  wants  my 
sincerity,  and  so  in  my  Soul's  accounting  now  it  is 
eternally  and  determinedly  No  Matter.    It  is  a  little 


1 6  Everyday  and  to-morrow 

bell  which  stopped  ringing  long  and  long  ago.  If  it 
rang  now  it  would  ring  only  No-Matter,  No-Matter. 
Then  it's  night  and  I  go  to  take  the  walk  I  didn't 
take  in  the  afternoon.  I  walk  down  long  lonely 
streets.  Long  lonely  thoughts  pile  into  me  and 
through  me  and  wrap  me  in  a  nebula  that  I  can  feel 
around  me  like  a  mantle.  I  walk  two  or  three  miles 
of  paved  streets  till  I'm  very  tired.  I  am  lithe  but 
fragile  from  constant  involuntary  self-analysis. 
One  may  analyze  one's  life-experience  and  life- 
emotion  till  physical  tissues  at  times  grow  frail, 
gossamer-thin.  It  is  then  as  if — at  a  word,  a 
whispered  thought,  a  beat  of  the  heart — one's  Soul 
might  flutter  through  the  Veil,  join  light  hands  with 
the  death-angel  and  flee  away. 

— but  I  love  my  life  even  while  I  analyze  it  bit  by 
bit  and  so  hate  it.  I  love  it  in  its  grating  monotones 
and  its  moments  of  glow  and  its  days  of  shadow 
and  storm  and  bitterish  lowering  passion — 
I  walk  back  beneath  a  night  sky  of  dusky  velvet-blue 
decked  with  jewels  of  moon  and  star  and  flying 
bright-edged  cloud.  The  night  has  a  subdued 
preciousness,  like  an  illicitly  pregnant  woman's. 
It  is  big  with  the  bastard-exquisite  To-morrow. 
The  night  air  kisses  my  lips  and  throat.  I  pull  ofi* 
my  gloves  to  feel  it  on  my  hands.  It  gives  me  a 
charmed  and  unexciting  feeling  of  being  caressed 


Everyday  and  to-morrow  17 

without  being  loved. 

I  come  back  to  my  blue-white  room,  take  off  my 
hat,  rufHe  my  fingers  through  my  hair,  look  at  Me  in 
the  mirror  and  smile  the  melancholy  wicked  smile 
which  I  keep  for  Me-alone.  It's  an  intimate  moment 
of  greeting — a  recognition  of  my  Familiar  on  coming 
back  to  her.  Often  when  I  walk  I  go  without  Me, 
and  wander  far  from  Me,  and  forget  Me. 
Then  I  sit  at  my  flat  black  desk  and  write  desultorily 
for  two  or  three  or  four  hours.  Sometimes  a  letter, 
sometimes  some  verses  or  a  hectic  fancy  in  staid 
prose.    But  now  mostly  this. 

Then  I  go  downstairs  to  a  refrigerator  or  a  cellar- way 
to  find  food — a  slice  off"  an  aff'able  cold  joint,  some 
chaste-looking  slices  of  bread,  a  slim  innocent  onion. 
And  I  eat  them,  not  relishingly  but  voraciously, 
reminding  myself  of  a  lean  foraging  furtive  coyote. 
It  is  two  or  three  or  four  in  the  morning.  I  smoke  a 
quiet  cigarette  in  a  cool  night  doorway  and  count 
the  nervous  gray-velvet  moths  outside  the  screen. 
And  all  the  while  I  think  and  think. 
Then  I  come  up  to  my  room  and  sit  on  the  floor  by 
my  low  bookcase  and  read  some  last-century  English 
poets — ^the  Brownings  and  Shelley  and  the  un- 
speakable John  Keats.  The  Poets  make  me  a  space 
of  incalescent  magic  and  loveliness.  They  are  the 
beings  blest  of  a  flaming  Heaven.     In  the  midst  of 


1 8  Everyday  and  to-morrow 

soddenest  earthiness  their  fiery  wings  *  pierce  the 
night. ' 

Then  Fm  thrilledly  tired.  I  close  the  books  and 
make  ready  for  my  bed  in  a  lyric-feeling  languor. 
A  soft  soothing  unsnapping  of  whalebone  stays: 
a  muffled  rhythmic  undoing  of  metal-and-silk-rubber 
garters :  a  pushing  down  and  sliding  out  of  daytime 
clothes  and  into  a  thin  pale  cool  silk  nightgown: 
a  hurried  brushing  of  hair:  an  anointing  of  hands 
and  throat  with  faint-scented  cream:  a  goodnight 
to  Me  in  the  mirror:  a  last  wave  of  a  fateful  thing — 
my  life-essence — casual  and  determined  and  con- 
temptuous and  menacing — sweeping  down  over  me 
in  an  invisible  shower:  and  Tm  betwixt  smooth 
linen  sheets. 

In  twenty  seconds  blest,  blest  sleep. 
Of  such  wide  littleness  is  my  day  made.  One  day 
will  differ  from  another  in  this  or  that  volcanic  mole- 
hill. And  some  days  I  not  only  wash  a  great  many 
dishes  but  do  a  deal  of  housework  neatly  and  self- 
satisfactorily  and  like  a  devilish  scullery  maid. 
And  some  days  as  I  move  in  the  petty  pace  thoughts 
and  feelings  sweet  or  barbarous  come  and  change 
my  world's  face  in  a  moment. 

Also  a  casual  human  being  of  rabbitish  brain  and 
chipmunkish  sensibility  may  stray  across  my  path 
and  gently  bore  me  and  accentuate  my  own  pagan- 


Everyday  and  to-morrow  19 

ness. 

But  always  the  same  days  in  restless  dubious  To- 

morrowness. 

Always  immorally  futile. 

And  eerily  alone. 


20  A  mathematic  dead-wall 


To-morrow 

I'M  put  to  it  to  decide  whether  God  loves  me  or 
hates  me  when  he  sets  me  down  alone. 
There  are  times  when  my  Loneliness  is  a  charmed 
and  scintillant  and  resourceful  Loneliness  with  a 
strange  and  ecstatic  gleam  in  it.  The  miracle  of 
being  a  person  rushes  upon  and  about  and  into  me 
*with  lightning  and  with  music' 
One  loses  that  in  a  day  of  many  friendships. 
But  oftener  are  times  when  the  tired,  tired  heart 
and  the  weary,  weary  brain  beat-beat,  beat-beat  to 
anguished  torturing  self-rhythms.  The  spirit  of  me 
closes  its  eyes  in  turbulent  dusks  of  wondering  and 
wishing  and  leans  its  forehead  against  a  mathematic 
dead-wall.  And  it  prays — blind  useless  unhumble 
prayers  which  leave  it  dry  and  destitute,  arid, 
unspeakably  lacking.  But  when  it  lifts  its  head  and 
opens  its  eyes  there  are  the  melting  mauves  and 
maroons  of  a  dead  sun  across  the  evening  sky,  and 
the  small  far  wistful  flames  of  always-hopeful  stars. 
— they  make  it  matter  less  whether  God  loves  or 
hates  me,  but  I  still  wish  I  knew. 


My  neat  blue  chair  2i 


To-morrow 

I  SUPPOSE  there's  nothing  quite  peculiar  to  even 
my  inmost  self  in  what  I  ponder  and  what  I 
experience  and  what  I  feel. 
My  only  elemental  *differentness'  is  that  I  find  it 
and  write  it. 

But  I  used  to  think  at  eighteen — those  thrice-fired 
adolescent  moments — that  only  I  suffered,  only  I 
reached  achingly  out  into  the  mists,  only  I  tasted 
new-bloomed  life-petals  intolerably  sweet  and  bitter 
on  my  lips. 

The  egotism  of  youth  is  merciless,  measureless, 
endlessly  vulnerable.  Youth  plays  on  itself  as  one 
plays  on  a  little  dulcimer,  with  music  as  sweet,  but 
with  a  crude  cruel  recklessness  which  jerks  and 
breaks  the  strings. 

I  have  got  by  that  stage  of  egotism.  But  Fve 
entered  on  another  wilder,  more  lawless — farther- 
seeing  if  less  be-visioned. 

While  I  sit  here  this  midnight  in  a  Neat  Blue  Chair 
in  this  Butte-Montana  for  what  I  know  a  legion- 
women  of  my  psychic  breed  may  be  sitting  lonely 
in  neat  red  or  neat  blue  or  neat  gray  or  neat  any- 
colored  chairs — in  Wichita-Kansas  and  South  Bend- 
Indiana  and  Red  Wing-Minnesota  and  Portland- 
Maine  and  Rochester-New  York  and  Waco-Texas 


22  My  neat  blue  chair 

and  La  Crosse-Wisconsin  and  Bowling  Green- 
Kentucky:  each  feeling  Herself  set  in  a  wrong 
niche,  caught  in  a  tangle  of  Kttle  vapidish  cross- 
purpose:  each  waiting,  waiting  always — waiting  all 
her  life — not  hopeful  and  passionate  like  Eighteen 
but  patient  or  blasphemous  or  scornful  or  volcanic 
like  Early-Thirty:  the  waiting-sense  giving  to  each 
a  personal  quality  big  and  suggestive  and  nurturing 
— and  with  it  a  long-accustomed  feeling  hke  a  thin 
bright  blade  stuck  deep  in  her  breast:  each  more  or 
less  roundly  hating  Waco-Texas  and  Portland- 
Maine  and  Red  Wing-Minnesota  and  the  other 
places:  and  each  beset  by  hot  unquiet  humannesses 
inside  her  and  an  old  yearn  of  sex  and  the  blood 
warring  with  myriad  minute  tenets  dating  from 
civilization's  dawn-times. 

But  though  I  am  of  that  psychic  breed  no  little 
tenets  war  in  me. 

It's  as  if  a  prelate  and  a  wood-nymph  had  fathered 
and  mothered  me:  making  me  of  a  ridiculous 
poignant  conscience  and  of  no  human  traditions. 
I  am  free  of  innate  conventionalities,  free  as  a 
wildcat  on  a  twilight  hill.  I  am  free  of  them  as  I 
sit  here,  quiet-looking  in  my  plain  black  dress. 
The  virile  Scotch-Canadian  curl  is  brushed  and 
brushed  out  of  my  hair  to  make  it  lie  smooth  and 
discreet  over  my  ears  and  forehead.     My  feet  are 


My  neat  blue  chair  23 

shod  daintily  like  a  charming  girFs.  My  nails  are 
pinkly  polishedly  pointed.  My  narrow  black  eye- 
brows look  nearly  patrician  in  their  sereneness. 
My  lips  are  stilly  sad.  My  eyelids  droop  like  the 
sucking  dove's.  But  my  gray  eyes  beneath  the 
lids — when  I  raise  them  to  the  glass,  my  own 
Essence  looks  out  of  them,  tiredly  vivid.  It  seems 
made  of  languor  and  barbaricness  and  despair:  and 
vague  guiltiness,  and  some  pure  disastrous  heathen 
religion,  and  lust:  and  lurid  consciousness  of  every- 
day things  and  smouldering  melancholy  and  blazing 
loving  hatred  of  life. 

My  gray  eyes  out-look  the  wildcat's  on  a  twilight 
hill. 

But — so  far  as  the  Sitting  goes — I  sit  here  in  my 
Neat  Blue  Chair  the  same  as  they  all  sit  in  any- 
colored  chairs  in  their  Wichitas  and  La  Crosses. 


24  A  lost  person 


To-morrow 

I  AM  wandering  about,  a  Lost  Person,  wandering 
and  lost. 
Not  magnificently  lost  in  wide  Gothic  forest 
closes,  with  strong  great  blackish  green  trunks  and 
branches  all  around  overwhelming  and  thrilling  me. 
Not  dramatically  lost  on  desert  reefs  with  breakers 
riding  up  like  menacing  hosts  and  joyously  drown- 
ing me. 

But  lost  surprisingly  in  a  small  clump  of  shoulder- 
high  hazel-brush.  In  it  are  some  wood-ticks,  and 
a  few  caterpillars,  and  a  few  wan  spiders  which  spin 
little  desultory  webs  from  twig  to  twig  and  then 
abandon  them  for  other  twigs.  Underfoot  are 
unexpected  wet  places  at  intervals  that  my  high 
hard  heels  sink  into  exasperatingly. 
I  walk  round  and  round  and  across  in  the  hazel- 
brush  groping  and  knowing  Fm  lost  in  it  but  know- 
ing little  else  of  it:  knowing  no  way  out  of  it. 
The  bushes  bear  green  leaves — rather  small  ones  and 
warped  because  the  clump  is  in  a  half-shaded  place 
back  of  a  hill.  And  they  bear  hazel-nuts,  but  not 
very  good  ones — mostly  shell. 


A  thin  damnedness  2$ 


To-morrow 

I  OWN  Two  plain  black  Dresses  and  none  besides. 
And  I  need  no  more. 
In  which  two  sentences  I  touch  the  crux  and 
the  keynote  and  the  thin  damnedness  of  my  life 
as  it  is  set:  of  my  life,  not  of  myself,  for  myself  lives 
naked  inside  the  circle  of  my  life. 
But  my  outer  life  is  spaced  by  my  Two  plain  Dresses. 
My  Two  Dresses  measure  how  far  removed  I  pres- 
ently am  from  the  wide  world  of  things. 
In  the  world  of  things  a  woman  is  judged  not 
specifically  by  her  morals:  not  invariably  by  her 
reputation:  not  absolutely  by  her  money:  not 
indubitably  by  her  social  prestige:  only  relatively 
by  her  beauty:  and  as  to  her  brain  or  lack  of  it — 
la-Ia-Ia!  She  is  judged  in  the  matter- world  simply, 
completely,  entirely  by  her  clothes.  It  is  tacitly 
so  agreed  and  decreed  all  over  the  earth — wherever 
women  are  of  the  female  sex  and  men  pursue  them. 
It  is  no  injustice  to  any  woman.  It  is  the  fairest 
fiat  in  the  unwritten  code. 

Only  a  few  women,  the  few  specialized  breeds,  can 
express  the  fire  or  the  humanness  in  them  by  play- 
acting or  suflFragetting  or  singing  or  painting  or 
writing  or  trained-nursing  or  house-keeping.  But 
there's  not  one — from  a  wandering  Romany  gypsy,  red- 


26  A  thin  damnedness 

blooded  and  strong-hearted,  to  an  over-guarded  over- 
bred  British  princess — who  doesn't  express  what  she  is 
in  the  clothes  she  wears  and  the  way  she  wears  them. 
Her  clothes  conceal  and  reveal,  artfully  and  contra- 
dictorily and  endlessly. 
It  is  all  a  limitless  field. 

No  actor  could  act  Hamlet  without  that  perfect 
Hamletesque  black  costume. 

A  nun's  staid  beautiful  habit  interprets  her  own 
meanings  within  and  without. 

A  woman  naked  may  look  markedly  pure:  the 
same  woman  clothed  conventionally  and  demurely 
may  achieve  a  meanly  ghouhshly  foul  seeming. 
One  either  is  made  or  marred  by  one's  habiliments. 
A  woman  by  her  raiment's  make  and  manner  can 
express  more  of  her  wit,  her  ego,  her  temper,  her 
humor,  her  plastic  pulsating  personality  than  she. 
could  by  throwing  a  bomb,  by  making  a  good  or 
bad  pudding,  by  losing  her  chastity  or  by  traducing 
her  neighbor.  The  germ  and  shadow  and  likeHhood 
of  each  of  those  acts  is  in  the  fashion  and  line  and 
detail  of  her  garments. 

A  jury  thinks  it  tries  a  womr.n  for  a  criine.  Some  of 
the  twelve  good  and  true  may  admit  each  to  himself 
that  they  are  trying  the  color  of  her  eyes  or  the  shape 
of  her  chin  or  the  droop  of  her  shoulders.  But  it's 
only  her  clothes  they  unwittingly  try  for  murder  or 


A  thin  damnedness  27 

theft  or  forgery,  or  whatever  has  tripped  her.     It 
may  be  an  alluringly  shabby  little  dress  that  saves 
her  from  the  gallows.    It  may  be  a  hat  worn  at  the 
wrong  angle  that  is  found  guilty  and  sentenced  to 
death.    A  glove  in  her  lap,  a  fluttering  veil,  a  little 
white  handkerchief  dropped  to  the  floor  by  her  chair 
— those  are  what  the  court  tries  for  life  or  liberty. — 
But  it  is  I  I  tell  about,  I  and  my  Two  plain  Dresses. 
In  me  a  smart  frock  or  an  unbecoming  one  makes  a 
surprising  difference.    I  impress  my  costume  with  my 
mixed  temperament  and  it  retaliates  in  kind. 
One  day  I  looked  a  beautiful  young  creature — one 
August  Saturday  in  New  York  it  was— in  a  tailored 
gown  of  embroidered  linen.    With  it  I  wore  such  a 
good  hat:  its  color  was  pale  olive:  its  texture  was  soft 
Milan  straw:  its  price  was  forty  dollars.    My  shoes 
were  gray  silk.    I  so  fancied  myself  that  day  that  I 
feared  lest  my  writing  talent  had  gone  away  from  me. 
For  God  takes  away  the  beer  if  he  gives  you  the 
skittles.    And  in  ill-conditioned  clothes — some  days 
the  weather,  the  devil,  the  soddenness  of  life  get  into 
one's  garments  and  make  even  fair  ones  look  ill- 
conditioned — I  am  plain-faced,  plain  all  over— so 
plain  that  the  villainies  of  my  nature  feel  doubtful 
and  I  half-think  I  may  be  a  good  woman. 
In  a  life  full  of  people  I  would  own  varied  delicate 
beautiful  clothes  since  it  is  by  them  one  is  judged, 


28  A  thin  damnedness 

and  since  I  am  quite  vain.  But  no  people  are  in 
my  life.  I  feel  deadlocked.  I  am  caught  in  a  vise 
made  by  my  own  analytic  ratiocination.  I  am  not 
free  to  live  a  world-life  till  I've  someway  expressed 
Me  and  learned  if  not  whither  I  go  at  least  where  I  stand. 
So  it's  Two  plain  Dresses  I  own  and  none  besides. 
It  may  be  I  shall  not  ever  again  need  more. 
The  Two  Dresses  are  at  present  of  serge  and  voile. 
Their  identity  changes  with  change  of  fashion  and 
with  wearing  out.  They  are  cut  well  and  fit  me 
well.  But  the  Two  does  not  change,  nor  the  plain- 
ness. I  change  only  from  one  Frock  to  the  other 
and  from  the  other  to  the  one  again. 
I  have  various  other  clothes.  A  woman — whatever 
her  traits  and  tempers — garners  what  she  can  of 
handmade  under-Iinens  and  dainty  nightgowns  and 
silk  hose  and  all  such  private  panoply.  They  are  the 
apparel  of  her  sex  rather  than  her  individuality. 
The  uncognizant  world  is  unable  to  judge  her  by 
them.  But  the  woman  herself  judges  and  respects 
herself  by  the  goodness  of  her  intimate  garments. 
My  sex  is  to  me  a  mystic  gift.  I  marvel  over  it  and 
clothe  it  silkenly. 

Also  I  own  a  healthful-looking  percale  house-gown 
or  two  in  which  I  do  housework. 
But  my  passing  life,  my  eerie  lonely  life,  is  lived  in 
my  Two  Dresses  and  none  besides,  and  I  need  no  more. 


A  prison  of  self  29 


M 


To-morrow 

Y  Two  Dresses  tell  me  the  scope  of  my 
present  Mary-Mac-Lane-ness. 
Every  day  they  tell  me  things  about  myself. 
They  tell  me  Fm  living  in  a  prison  of  self,  invisible 
and  ascetic  and  somberly  just. 

They  tell  me  Fm  living  an  outer  life  narrow  and 
broodingly  companionless  and  that  if  I  were  not 
self-reliant  by  long  habit  a  leprous  morbidness 
would  rot  me  in  body  and  spirit. 
They  tell  me  because  of  outer  solitude  an  inner 
fever  of  emotion  and  egotism  and  a  fervid  analytic 
light  are  on  all  my  phases  of  self:  mental,  physical, 
psychical  and  sexual. 

They  tell  me  my  way  of  thought  is  at  once  meditative 
and  cave-womanish. 

They  tell  me  Fm  all  ways  the  Unmarried  Woman 
and  profoundly  loverless. 

They  tell  me  Fm  like  a  child  and  like  a  sequestered 
savage. 

They  tell  me  I  am  having  no  restful  unrealities  of 
social  life  with  chattering  women  and  no  monotonous 
casually  bloodthirsty  flirtation^  with  men. 
They  tell  me  I  walk  daily  to  the  edges  of  myself  and 
stare  into  horrible-sweet  egotistic  abysses. 
They  tell  me  Fm  grave-eyed  and  coldly  melancholy. 


30  A  prison  oj  self 

They  tell  me  there's  a  bereftness  in  the  curves  of  my 

breasts  and  an  unfulfillment  in  my  loose-girt  loins. 

They,  tell  me  I  am  barren  of  sensation  and  fertile  in 

feeling. 

They  tell  me  God  has  taken  away  the  beer  and  also 

the  skittles  and  left  me  only  pieces  of  bread  and 

drinks  of  water. 


A  winding  sheet  3 1 


To-morrow 

THE  least  important  thing  in  my  life  is  its 
tangibleness. 
The  only  things  that  matter  lastingly  are 
the  things  that  happen  inside  me. 
If  I  do  a  cruel  act  and  feel  no  cruelty  in  my  Soul 
it  is  nothing.     If  I  feel  cruelty  in  my  Soul  though  J 
do  no  cruel  act  Tm  guilty  of  a  sort  of  butchery  and 
my  spirit-hands  are  bloody  with  it. 
The  adventures  of  my  spirit  are  realer  than  the 
outer  things  that  befall  me. 

To  dwell  on  the  self  that  is  known  only  to  me — the 
self  that   is   intricate  and  versatile,   tinted,   demi- 
tinted,  deep-dyed,  luminous,  gives  me  an  intimate 
delectation,  a  mental  inflorescence  and  sometimes 
an  exaltation.     It  is  not  always  so  but  it  can  be  so. 
But  always  to  look  back  on  the  mass  of  outer  events 
that  have  made  my  tangible  life  darkens  my  day^ 
Introspection  throws  a  witching  spell  around  me, 
though  it  may  be  a  black  one. 
But  retrospection  wraps  me  in  a  Winding  Sheet. 
When  the  day  is  aheady  dark  from  low-hanging 
clouds — and  often  when  the  sun  is  bright,  bright, 
bright — I  walk  my  floor  and  think  of  my  scattered 
life-flotsam  with  a  frown  at  the  eyebrows:  a  coarse 
and  heavy  and  twisted  frown. 


32  A  winding  sheet 

To-day  was  a  leaden  day.  The  air  held  a  quality 
like  the  infernal  breath  of  dead  people.  I  leaned  el- 
bows on  my  dull  window-sill  and  looked  off  at  green 
and  purple  mountains.  I  tried  to  think  of  some 
reason — some  reason  tangible  or  poetic — for  living. 
I  wore  my  brocade  Chinese  coat  fastened  down  the 
left  side  with  round  flashing  glass  buttons  and 
embroidered  with  blue  bats  and  gardenias:  and  with 
it  a  crinkly  cr^pe-silk  petticoat:  and  silk  shoes  and 
respectable  white  silk  stockings.  I  felt  righteous 
because  in  the  forenoon  I  had  done  much  house- 
work. I  worked  thoroughly  and  well,  swearing  and 
repeating  poetry  softly  to  lend  me  impetus.  And 
afterward  I  felt  useful  and  good. 
But  having  changed  from  Dutch  cap  and  apron  and 
domesticness  to  scented  silk  and  my  sad  window  I 
grew  suddenly  frail  and  vulnerable.  Shadows 
stormed  my  wall  and  scaled  it  and  entered  in  and 
sacked  my  castle.  I  lounged  away  from  my  window, 
folded  my  arms  in  my  loose  blue  sleeves  and  slowly 
walked  my  floor.  I  had  no  strength  within  to 
combat  shadows. 

I  picked  up  two  alien  shreds,  of  lint  and  paper 
respectively,  from  the  rug,  but  inside  me  undigested 
and  indigestible  memories  had  their  own  way. 
They  brought  close  an  unsatisfying  and  dissatisfying 
vista  of  Mary  MacLanes. 


A  winding  sheet  33 

There  was  a  stubborn  baby  in  Winnipeg-Canada, 
as  IVe  heard,  a  baby  with  a  white  skin,  coldly  pen- 
sive dark-blue  eyes,  no  hair,  no  voice,  hand-worked 
muslin  frocks  and  a  fat  lumpish  mien. 
It  was  this  Mary  MacLane. 

There  was  a  three-year-old  child,  as  I  dimly  re- 
member, still  in  Canada  and  still  stubborn,  with  a 
stout  keg-like  pink-and-white  body,  bafHing  blue 
eyes,  a  tiny  voice,  thick  sun-colored  curls,  cambric 
frocks  and  short  white  socks  and  a  morose  temper. 
She  had  one  love,  a  yellow  tortoise-shell  kitten  which 
she  hugged  and  hugged  with  violence  until  one  day 
it  died  surprisingly  in  her  arms. 
It  was  this  Mary  MacLane. 

There  was  a  seven-year-old  child  in  Minnesota,  as 
I  well  remember,  still  stubborn  and  still  often  morose, 
with  a  thin  bony  little  body,  conscious  gray  eyes,  a 
tanned  face,  weather-beaten  hands,  untidy  frocks, 
beautiful  fluffy  golden  hair,  a  tendency  to  secretive- 
ness  and  lies,  a  speculative  mind,  fantastic  day- 
dreams and  a  free  hoydenish  way  of  life.  She  had 
playmates  but  no  loves  except  an  objective  love  for 
quiet  greenwoods  and  sweet  meadows  and  windy 
hills  and  hay-filled  barns,  and  for  the  surface  details 
of  life.  She  had  subjective  hatreds  for  being  fussed 
over,  for  being  teased  and  for  relatives. 
It  was  this  Mary  MacLane. 


34  -^  winding  sheet 

There  was  a  thirteen-year-old  person,  as  I  well 
remember,  in  a  windy  Montana  town,  who  was 
neither  girl,  child  nor  savage  but  was  a  mixture  of 
the  three.  She  had  a  devilish  contrary  will  and 
temper,  the  unenlightened  inexpressive  wholly 
unattractive  face  and  features  of  early  adolescence* 
a  self-love  that  had  not  the  dignity  of  egotism  and 
a  devouring  appetite  for  reading.  She  read  every- 
thing she  happened  on — from  Voltaire  to  Nick 
Carter:  from  *Lady  Audley's  Secret'  to  Fox's  Book 
of  Martyrs.  She  read  Alexander  Pope  and  Victor 
Hugo  and  John  Stuart  Mill.  She  read  *  Lena  Rivers ' 
by  Mary  J.  Holmes:  also  Confucius:  and  the 
Brothers  Grimm.  She  had  a  long-legged  lanky 
frame,  conscious  gray  eyes,  lovely  coppery-gold  dark 
hair  and  a  silly  headful  of  tangled  irrational  thoughts. 
She  had  pathetic  impossible  day-dreams.  She  had 
few  companions  and  no  loves  but  much  hatred  for 
most  things  sane,  sensible  and  honest. 
It  was  this  Mary  MacLane. 

There  was  an  eighteen-year-old  girl  in  this  Butte, 
as  I  well  remember,  with  the  outward  savagery 
tamed  out  of  her  by  studiousness.  She  was  slim 
but  no  longer  lanky  and  owned  a  white-hot  aliveness 
and  a  grace.  She  had  repelling  gray  eyes  and  the 
beautiful  coppery  hair,  and  about  her  an  isolation, 
a  complete  aloofness.    Her  spirit  fed  itself  on  wonder- 


A  winding  sheet  35 

ful  and  exquisite  dreams  alternated  by  moods  of 
young  passionate  woe,  analyzed  and  torn  to  shreds: 
all  of  it  hid  beneath  a  very  quiet  surface.  She  had 
outwardly  a  tense  markedly  virginal  quality  but 
was  inwardly  insolently  demi-vierge.  She  had  no 
companions,  no  friendships.  She  absorbed  herself 
in  digging  knowledge  out  of  her  high  school  text- 
books, studying  and  imagining  over  it,  and  wander- 
ing in  the  fascinating  highways  which  it  opened  to 
her.  She  was  at  her  moment  of  brain-awakening, 
soul-awakening,  sex-awakening,  life-awakening, 
world-awakening:  it  uncurtained  windows  of  magic 
old  sorrow  for  her  to  look  from.  She  had  no  char- 
acteristic weaknesses — she  was  strongly  and  scorn- 
fully courageous.  It  and  the  need  of  self-expression, 
born  of  her  teeming  spirit  and  life-long  suppression 
of  it,  led  her  to  write  herself  out  in  a  book,  which 
was  published.  It  was  a  poetic  book  and  had  insight 
and  vision  and  a  riot  of  color  with  youth  as  its  key- 
note. And  it  was  human  and  figuratively  and 
literally  full  of  the  devil.  The  far-and-wide  public 
in  England  and  America  read  it,  and  the  newspapers 
made  a  loud  noise  about  it  and  the  lonely  girl  who 
wrote  it  found  herself  oddly  notorious.  It  brought 
money  which  made  her  free  of  Butte  and  it  brought 
human  things  into  her  life  which  changed  her  life 
forever.     And   it  brought  her   no   inner  or  outer 


36  A  winding  sheet 

excitement  or  elation. 
It  was  this  Mary  MacLane. 

There  was  a  girl  of  six-and-twenty  in  Boston  and  in 
New  York  who  had  half-forgot  her  long-familiar 
Ego  for  several  years.  She  lived  and  moved  in  folly 
and  triviality  and  falseness.  From  having  had  too 
few  companions  she  had  too  many  who  did  her  no 
good  and  no  harm  but  helped  her  waste  passing  days 
and  dissipate  her  moods  and  mental  tissues.  She 
had  grown  worldly  in  taste,  weak  in  manner  of 
thought,  fragile  in  body  from  a  mad  irregularity 
of  food  and  sleep,  and  in  every  attribute  uncertain 
of  herself.  Her  Soul  lay  sleeping:  her  Heart  because 
it  felt  too  keenly  worked  overtime:  nothing  engaged 
her  Mind.  But  her  analytic  trend  stayed  by  and 
with  it  she  pulled  to  bits  the  varied  fragmentary 
things  she  encountered.  She  learned  New  York 
town  in  human  sordid  enlightening  disciplining  ways. 
She  learned  people  of  many  kinds  in  many  ways. 
She  learned  other  young  women,  which  depressed 
and  exhilarated  and  perplexed  her.  She  learned  men 
— a  race  whose  make  and  motive  toward  women 
bears  no  analysis.  She  had  not  the  usual  defensive 
armor  of  the  normal  woman,  for  she  was  not  a  normal 
woman  but  certain  trends  of  varying  individuals 
gathered  into  one  sensitive  woman-envelope.  She 
was  careless  toward  men  in  their  crude  sex-rapacity 


^ 


A  winding  sheet  37 

in  ways  no  'regular'  woman  would  dare  or  care  to  be. 
No  man  could  wring  one  tear  from  her,  nor  cause  a 
quickening  of  her  foolish  Heart,  nor  any  emotion 
in  her  save  mirth.  And  there  were  women  friends — 
There  were  some  friendships  whose  ill  effects  she 
will  never  recover  from,  from  having  bestowed  too 
much  of  herself  on  them  in  the  headlong  newness  of 
knowing  and  owning  friendship  after  her  long  young 
loneliness. 

— she  could  not  cherish  anything  sanely.  She 
couldn't  stand  in  her  doorway  and  watch  a  pretty 
bird  flying  above  a  green  hedge,  and  admire  it  for 
the  gleam  of  its  brilliant  wings  in  the  sun,  and  let 
it  go.  She  must  needs  run  out — leaving  her  door 
standing  open  and  tea-and-cakes  untasted  within — 
and  follow  where  the  bird  flew,  through  mire  and 
brier,  round  the  world — 

From  the  odd  notoriety  were  many  letters  and 
experiences  and  adventures.  She  met  some  famous 
persons — writers,  actors,  artists — of  agreeable  philo- 
sophic plaisances.  She  saw  her  book  of  youth 
burlesqued  with  artistic  piquance  in  the  Weber-and- 
Fields  show  of  its  season  (with  one  Collier,  adroitest 
of  comedians,  cast  as  her  long-lost  Devil).  There 
was  a  hasty  voyage  to  the  edge  of  Europe — a  voyage 
of  terrific  seasickness  lying  in  her  stateroom:  a  half- 
glimpse  of  Paris  all  gray  and  green  in  the  rain:   a 


38  '  A  winding  sheet 

whole  glimpse  of  London,  mystic,  Dickensesque 
and  roundly  British  in  its  yellow-brown  fog:  and 
back  again  within  ten  days  with  more  berth-ridden 
seasickness  lasting  from  Cherbourg  to  New  York 
harbor:  the  whole  adventure  grown  from  a  Spring 
morning  impulse.  There  were  winters  in  Florida  at 
sun-flooded  resort  towns  full  of  gaudiness  and 
gambling  and  surprising  winter-resort  people.  Those 
were  mongrel  wastrel  years  empty  of  every  realness, 
every  purpose,  every  vantage:  they  filled  her  with  a 
bastard  wisdom.' 
It  was  this  Mary  MacLane. 

There  was  a  girl  of  seven-and-twenty  worn  to  psychic 
fragments  and  returned  on  a  winter's  day  in  a  mood 
of  indiff'erence  to  this  Butte.  It  was  her  first  return 
since  she  and  her  book  had  gone  forth  eight  years 
before.  She  celebrated  it  by  being  brought  low  with 
a  baleful  blood-sucking  demon  of  illness,  what  is 
called  scarlet  fever.  Borne  upon  by  the  mountain 
altitude  after  sea-Ievels  and  getting  in  the  way  of 
epidemic  germs,  she  had  no  chance.  A  strong 
feverish  serpent  wound  itself  around  her,  consuming 
and  destroving.  There  were  tortured  dying  weeks. 
She  had  never  been  ill  before  in  all  her  life.  This 
was  the  most  crucial  bodily  adventure  she  had 
known.  It  opened  a  new  and  dreadful  world. 
There  was  no  passing  of  time  in  those  long,  long 


A  winding  sheet  39 

weeks,  no  rational  thinking,  no  day,  no  night,  no 
dark,  no  morning,  no  memory.    There  was  pain,  and 
utter  weariness,  and  a  feeling  of  being  hurried  to  her 
grave.     There  was  an  air  of  hurry  in  the  stillness 
around,  as  if  she  and  Death  had  made  a  date  which 
she  would  be  late  in  keeping  unless  she  were  urged  on. 
There  was  a  doctor,  and  a  crisp  white  starched  nurse, 
and  there  were  interminable  bitter  drugs  and  tall  nar- 
row glasses  of  monotonous  milk.    She  was  endlessly 
disturbed  by  milk  and  medicine,  and  by  cold  spong- 
ings    and    changings    of    feverish    bed-linens,    and 
anointings  with  olive  oil,  and  takings  of  her  temper- 
ature, and  sprayings  of  her  throat:  when  she  wanted 
only  to  sink  down,  down,  forever  and  forever  to  the 
underworld.     She   almost   sank.     But   God    capri- 
ciously decided  he  had  other  plans  for  her — insomuch 
as  decreeing  she  was  not  to  be  let  go  then.     After 
seven  weeks  she  tiredly  rose  from  her  bed  and  took 
stock  of  herself.     Her  role  then  was  of  a  horrible 
yellow  skeleton  with  negative  gray  eyes,  a  wreck  of 
tissue  and  vitality  such  as  only  scarlet  fever  can 
achieve,  and  her  beautiful  thick  coppery  hair  changed 
to  a  strange  short  mouse-colored  tangle.     She  was  a 
long  time  recovering.     The  scarlet  demon  changed 
her    life    and    its     meanings    and     energies    and 
outlooks    more    effectually   than    if   she   had   been 
trapped  by  a  game-at-Iaw  and  gaols  and  courts  had 


40  A  winding  sheet 

had  their  toll  of  her.    But  after  months,  a  year  and  a 

half  of  months,  her  health  came  back  perfect  if  not 

vigorous,  and  her  good  looks — the  few  she  ever  had, 

and  even  the  humanizing  incongruous  curls,  though 

changed,  grew  long  and  covered  her  head  again  in  a 

heathen  frivol.     A  so  magnificent  mystery  is  this 

blood-and-flesh.     It  grows  up  again  out  of  its  ashes. 

Burn  all  of  it  but  one  cell  in  the  scorchingest  sickness 

and  so  that  bones  are  still  whole  it  will  renew  itself 

from  that,  perfect  as  the  sweet-bay.    But  this  mind, 

less    magnificent    and    less    mysterious    and    more 

delicate  and  dubious,  rallies  only  by  aid  of  the  heart 

beneath  it  and  the  soul  beyond  it.     Her  mind  came 

slowly  out  of  darkened  apathy.     It  lived  in  a  high- 

walled  cloister  telling  its  languid  beads  by  rote. 

But  as  if  it  sensed  the  sweet  aura  of  her  renewed 

body  it  at  last  woke  strong  and  cold  overnight  and 

was  aware  again  of  itself  and  the  mourning  magic  of 

being. 

It  was  this  Mary  MacLane. 

And  after  a  year  or  two  more  it  is  this  Mary 

MacLane. 

It  is  I  myself. 

I  walk  my  floor  in  leaden  retrospect-days  with  a  feel 

in  my  throat  of  damned  and  damning  unfulfillment 

and  at  my  eyebrows  the  twisted  frown. 

In  it  is  dread  and  anguish  and  worriment:    in  it  is 


A  winding  sheet  41 

hideous  altering  breaking  prepollence  of  death. 

— if  my  hair,  just  my  hair,  had  not  come  back  after 

that  red  fever  Vd  have  decided — not  capriciously 

like  God  but  determinedly  like  myself — to  have  died 

by  my  own  hand  one  night.     It  is  no  brave  thought 

and  it  would  have  been  no  brave  deed.     Though  it 

wants  a  lowering  courage  to  leave  life  when,  despite 

all,  one  loves  its  very  textureless  color,  its  bodiless 

air:  not  to  speak  of  the  yellow  hot  deathless  sunshine 

that  can  not  reach  one  in  her  dark  grave — 

But  the  look  and  feel  of  my  hair  are  the  look  and 

feel  of  positive  Hfe,  opposed  to  death. 

To  live  up  to  my  hair  would  keep  me  brave. 

But  the  retrospects,  which  I  can't  escape,  come  and 

wrap  me  in  the  Winding  Sheet. 


42  The  Dover  road 


To-morrow 

I  LAY  down  at  noonday  on  my  green  couch  and 
I  had  a  quaint  dream.  I  have  just  awakened 
from  it  in  a  flush  of  languor  and  comfort.  And 
the  dream  is  vivid  in  my  mind.  I  dreamed  I  was 
married  and  it  was  pink-and-pearl  dawn  in  my 
married  bed-room.  And  in  the  bed  one  inch  away 
from  mine  was  not  my  married  husband  but  *  another 
man.'  It  was  no  man  I  can  recall  having  seen. 
As  I  look  back  into  the  dream  he  seems  of  the 
nowhere,  a  stranger.  But  in  the  dream  he  was  no 
stranger.  I  had  crudely  admitted  him  to  my  night. 
And  I  had  just  awakened  in  the  pink-and-white 
dawn  and  was  sitting  silk-gowned  and  ruffle-haired 
in  my  bed,  cross-legged  like  a  tailor  with  my  elbows 
on  my  knees  and  my  chin  on  my  palms,  idly  contem- 
plating him.  And  he  was  lying  in  the  other  narrow 
bed  contemplating  me  and  smiling  a  little.  He  had 
nice  teeth  and  yellowish  hair.  The  crux  of  the 
dream  was  the  sound  'off-stage'  of  the  approaching 
footsteps  of  monsieur-the-husband.  As  it  always  is 
in  the  psychology  of  dreams  the  insistent  thing  in 
the  situation  was  not  the  footsteps,  nor  even  that 
they  were  approaching,  but  the  sound:  the  elusive 
threat  of  their  sound.  He  would  presently  discover 
us.     Nobody  appeared  to  care:   not  *  another  man' 


The  Dover  road  43 

smiling  so  tranquilly:  not  I  sitting  musingly  over- 
looking him  who  had  overnight  'enjoyed  me':  not 
the  husband,  because  he  never  knew  it — before  he 
could  open  the  guilty  door  I  awoke. 
A  short-cut  gently  headlong  dream.  I  was  at  once 
married,  mixed  adulterantly  with  an  imperfect 
stranger  and  awaiting  in  pleasant  mild  anticipation, 
to  match  the  pink-and-pearl  of  the  summer  dawn, 
the  climax  in  the  approaching  sound  of  my  husband's 
footsteps.  It  was  humorous  and  artistic.  Un- 
seemly preliminaries  were  done  away  with  in  that 
dream.  I  was  given  at  once  the  one  exciting  worth- 
while moment  in  it. 

Having  no  data  as  to  what  were  my  husband's, 
temper  and  tenor,  what  he  looked  like  or  who  he 
was,  I  could  not  in  the  dream  or  out  of  it  surmise 
what  he  would  say  or  how  he  would  act  when  he 
opened  the  door. 

— a  theme  for  idling  speculation  in  a  summer's 
day— 

Also  I  wonder  whence  came  that  dream:  so  Un- 
expected: so  Irrelevant  to  any  thought  in  me:  so 
Artistically  Right:  so  Disgusting:  so  Dramatic:  so 
quaintly  Vulgar. 

A  question:  to  which  the  one  answer  is  that  un- 
answerable answer  to  all  questions,  propounded  by  Mr. 
F.'s  Aunt — *  There's  milestones  on  the  Dover  road.' 


44  The  harp  oj  worn  strings 


M 


To-morrow 

AY  I  own  no  unleavened  egotism. 
May  I  own  no  egotism  that  is  not  sensitive 
and  poignant  and  vibrant:  a  harp  of  Worn 
Strings. 

The  surprising  world  is  full  of  non-analytic  persons 
of  ox-eyed  vision  and  hen-headed  mental  caliber 
whose  egotism  is  a  stupendous  impregnable  armor: 
those  who  burned  the  Maid  of  Orleans:  those  who 
crucified  the  prophet  of  Nazareth:  those  who  killed 
John  Keats. 

They  inherit  the  earth,  which  is  a  Golden-Green 
earth,  but  never  look  at  it. 

They  accept  this  life,  which  is  Intoxicating  life,  but 
never  feel  its  texture  with  their  fingers. 
They  gather  a  Blue  iris  by  a  marsh-edge  and  let  it 
die  in  their  sweating  hands,  or  let  it  fall  to  the  ground 
as  they  walk,  or  throw  it  away  when  the  Blue  petals 
droop:  without  looking  at  it  and  breathing  it  and 
knowing  it:  without  sensing  the  tremulous  Blue  to 
be  lovelier  in  its  wilting. 

Theirs  is  the  thick  fat  solidly-fierce  egotism  of  an 
emperor  or  an  infant  whose  main  metaphysic  concept 
is  that  he  is  alive,  and  will  remain  alive,  and  must 
be  aliv^  though  all  around  him  bleed  drop  by  drop 
to  their  death. 


The  harp  of  worn  strings  4^ 

I  have  analyzed  mine,  and  it  is  not  so  with  me. 

If  I  say  I  am  enchanting  or  false  or  despicable  it  is 

because  I  know  it's  true.     Not  because  I  say  it  but 

because  I  have  tested  and  proved  it.     I  feel  the 

textures  of  my  life  with  the  tips  of  my  fingers.     I 

turn  my  senses  outward  and  let  the  old  winds  blow 

over   them — icy,   balmy,   harsh,   gentle,   scorching, 

cooling.     I  suffer  for  it  but  I  know  those  winds: 

songs  of  seas  and  stars  and  of  little  pebbles  are  in 

their  thunderous-dim  wailing:    life  is   in  the  soft 

stinging  perfume  of  their  wings. 

No  breath  of  poetry  and  beauty  comes  to  me  that 

I  do  not  pay  for  with  the  beating  ache  of  my  Heart, 

the  nervous  tensions  of  my  Body,  the  fraying  and 

shredding  of  my  Soul.     If  any  beauty  or  poet-thing 

comes  easily  and  gives  me  pleasure  and  not  pain,  I 

know  I  have  not  yet  got  it  and  that  it  will  come 

again. 

It  will  come  again:  with  the  pain. 

I  can't  eat  cake  and  have  it. 

I  can't  make  silk  purses  out  of  sows'  ears. 

Those  things  I  learn  nearly  perfectly  from  playing 

on  my  harp  with  the  Worn  Strings. 


46  A  strongly-windy  Saturday 


To-morrow 

IT  is  a  strongly-windy  Saturday. 
A  thought  achieves  itself  in  my  roiled-and- 
placid  brain:    that  one  half  of  me  is  Mad, 
but  the  other  half  is  doubly  Sane  and  someway  over- 
Sane,  so  that  in  it  all  I  break  a  little  better  than  even. 


A  someway  separate  individual  47 


T 


To-morrow 

HIS  Body  I  live  in  is  familiar  and  mysterious. 
It  is  like  a  book  of  poetry  to  read  and  read 
again. 

It  has  the  owned  sentientness  of  bone-and-flesh, 
and  with  it  tremors  fine  as  spirit-emotions. 
My  Body  is  more  chaste  than  my  Mind,  my  Heart 
and  my  Soul.    My  Body  if  fragile  is  healthful,  and 
is  one  with  the  woman-race:    it  moves  with  the 
sunht  cosmos.    My  Mind  wanders  in  sex-chaos  and 
muses  on  piquant  impure  things,  enchanting  vil- 
lainies, odd  inversions,  whatnot.    My  Soul — a  sweet 
and  an  exquisite  Thing— its  tired  wings  have  borne 
it    languidly    down    the    dim    stairways    of   many 
centuries,  some  leading  in  wilful  perverted  ways. 
And  my  Heart  is  a  pagan  Heart.     Its  essence  is 
flavored  with  the  day  and  lyric  trail  of  the  Sapphic 
students. 

Bodily  I  am  also  pagan  in  the  freedom  of  my  owned 
sex  feelings— as  are  all  women.  Most  of  them  do 
not  know  it  and  those  who  do  hide  it  in  a  tomb-like 
silence,  except  the  brazen,  the  headlongly  honest 
and  the  artlessly  frank.  I  come  under  none  of  those 
heads.  I  am  myself.  I  live  and  ponder  alone. 
And  my  Body  feels  consciously  aloof  and  as  a  some- 
way  separate   individual:    with    inner    organs    as 


48  A  someway  separate  individual 

eternal  hopes,  smooth  skin  as  emotion  and  drops  of 
blood  as  thoughts — little  drops  of  sparkling  red 
virile  sweet  blood  for  its  thoughts. 
I  so  love  my  Body  as  it  lives  and  breathes  and  moves 
about,  with  me  and  close  to  me.  It  is  my  so  constant 
companion.  It  is  an  attractive  girl,  a  human  being 
of  some  charm.  I  love  it  for  the  priceless  air  it 
breathes  and  the  long  jewel-days  of  sunshine  it  has 
known:  for  the  tiny  wears  and  tears  of  its  daily 
life — ^the  rending  of  its  magic  tissues  with  each 
going-up-or-down-stairs,  each  crossing  of  a  door-sill. 
I  love  it  for  that  it  must  lie  at  last  pale,  pale  and 
still — still — still — in  its  grave. 

I  love  my  Body  for  its  woman-complexities  of  sex. 
I  love  it  for  the  lonely  lyric  poetry  of  its  cell-ad- 
ventures. 

I  love  my  Body  for  this  long  journey  of  woe  and 
loveliness  which  it  goes,  from  Birthday  to  Death- 
day,  in  wilding  passions  of  subtle  nervousness :  each 
day  a  day  of  bodily  beauty  and  intolerableness  and 
fear  and  utter  mystery:  because  life  is,  and  because 
I  own  a  white  smooth-skinned  Body,  and  because 
the  strange,  strange  Air  of  Everyday  breathes  on 
it — ^touches  it — ^always! 


Sincerity  and  despair  49 


To-morrow 

I  AM  a  true  Artist,  not  as  a  writer  but  as  a  writing- 
person. 
I  try  to  feel  myself  literarily  a  poet — finer-made 
than  a  god.  But  I  fail  as  a  poet-litterateur  as  I  fail 
as  a  poet-person.  A  poet  flies  always  on  wings  of 
fiery  gold  though  it  might  be  waywardly.  But 
often  I  walk  with  my  feet  in  odd  gutters,  and  have 
some  plaisance  in  them,  and  analyze  their  gutteriness 
absorbedly  and  own  them  as  part  of  my  portion. 
— poet  or  no  poet,  it  is  best  to  be  myself.  In  heights 
and  murks  and  widths  and  trivial  horrors,  myselj — 
But  as  an  Artist  I  am  in  the  true.  As  a  painter  of 
words  and  maker  of  paragraphs  which  picture  my 
phases  and  emotions,  and  in  my  conscious  feeling 
anent  it,  I  realize  the  artist  flair,  the  artist  temper. 
It  is  not  a  literary  but  a  personal  art. 
I  have  what  goes  with  all  artist-matter — long  periods 
of  dry-rot  when  having  nothing  ripe  to  write  I  write 
nothing.  My  Artist-spirit  proves  itself,  justifies 
itself  in  my  times  of  stagnation  and  reaction.  Out 
of  it  something  human  and  sad  and  lustrous  grows 
in  me,  something  which  is  half  worldly  but  awaits 
its  ripe  time  of  expression  with  someway-divine 
scorn. 
I  once  thought  me  destined  to  be  a  'writer'  in  the 


5*0  Sincerity  and  despair 

ordinary  sense.  And  many  good  people  visioned  a 
writing  career  for  me.  It  has  a  vapid  taste,  just  to 
recall  it.  My  flawed  life  has  that  to  felicitate  upon — 
that  I  have  not  spent  it  in  fat  lumps  of  writing, 
magazine  tales  and  sex-novels.  In  the  days,  and 
later,  when  my  demi-vierge  book  made  its  success  I 
was  besought  by  publishers  to  write  others — to 
go  on,  to  reap  and  garner.  I  pushed  all  that  away 
with  a  preoccupied  hand,  not  as  part, and  parcel  of 
my  wastrel  living  but  in  my  assured  Artist-temper. 
I  should  feel  more  true-to-form  to  earn  my  living  by 
making  linen  roses  in  a  shop,  along  with  rows  of 
pale  women,  than  by  my  writing. 
My  writing  is  to  me  a  precious  thing — and  a  rare 
bird — and  a  Babylonish  jade.  It  demands  gold  in 
exchange  for  itself.  But  though  it  is  my  talent  it  is 
not  my  living.  It  is  too  myself,  like  my  earlobes 
and  my  throat,  to  commercialize  by  the  day. 
But  I  can  not  think  of  me  as  an  Artist  without  think- 
ing of  me  as  a  Liar.  The  two  are  someway  related. 
I  am  an  appalling,  an  encompassing  Liar.  I  am  a 
Liar  by  the  clock.  My  life  ticks  out  silent  lies  as 
my  Httle  clock  ticks  out  seconds.  It  is  a  phase  hard 
to  put  my  finger  on.  I  feel  it  on  me  the  way  I  feel  a 
headache.  I  write  this  book  with  seriousness  and 
earnestness.  It  is  all  a  mood  of  sincerity  and  de- 
spair.   But  except  I  give  it  some  backgrounding  of 


Sincerity  and  despair  ci 

lies,  though  each  thing  in  it  is  fair  fact,  I  fail  as'an 
Artist. 

It  is  strange  about  lies— any  lies,  all  lies.  They  are 
muscularly  stronger 'than  truths.  They  come  more 
readily  to  human  tongues.  They  fit  more  easily 
into  the  games  of  this  life.  And  in  me  they  seem 
needful  to  my  Artist  mind. 

I  mean  not  the  lies  I  may  tell  but  the  lies  I  think. 
I  mean  not  my  falseness.  That  is  a  different  thing, 
one  I  feel  someway  responsible  for.  But  the  thinking 
lies  feel  to  be  a  heritage  from  ancient  evil  selves. 
I  lie  to  myself,  to  the  air  around  me — I  blow  lies 
into  space  from  my  quiet  lips.  And  one  half  of  me 
knows  them  for  lies  and  the  other  half  of  me  believes 
them. 

Those  half-known  lies,  the  need  of  the  lies  half- 
believed,  are  the  realization  of  an  essential  Artist- 
spirit. 

The  oblique  belief  in  them  and  the  recognition  of 
them  as  lies  proclaim  me  to  myself,  as  a  writing- 
person:  Liar  and  Artist. 


52  Ifs  not  death 


To-morrow 

IT'S  not  Death  I  fear,  nor  Life. 
I  horridly  fear  something  this  side  of  Death  but 
out-pacing  Life  a  little:    a  nervousness   in   my 
Stomach — a  very  Muddy  Street — a  Lonely  Hotel 
Room. 


A  human  prerogative  5'3 


To-morrow 

IT  is  a  quiet  deep  of  night.     A  bell  has  just  tolled 
two. 
I  am  clothed  in  cool  bedroom  negligees  and  a 
softening  sweetness  of  cold  cream,  from  head  to 
foot. 

I  am  tranquil  for  to-day  I  had  a  walk  that  made  me 
feel  Sincere  and  Safe. 

It  is  a  comforting  feeling:  it  is  like  a  beef-sandwich. 
It  was  a  long  walk  south-east  of  Butte  along  an 
outskirting  road  where  I  used  often  to  walk  when  I 
was  sixteen — a  broad  gray  desert.  It  was  the  same 
sand  and  barrenness.  It  was  bare  and  withered  as 
if  a  giant  coyote  had  picked  its  rocky  ribs. 
The  day  was  windy  and  dusty.  The  sunshine  was 
thick  and  sweet  and  heavy  like  floating  honey. 
The  dust  that  blew  against  the  white  of  my  neck 
was  like  ground  glass. 
My  feet  ached  as  I  walked. 

My  shoes  were  Cuban-heeled  t'hick-soled  pumps  of 
corded  silk,  a  kind  easy  to  walk  in.  But  the  same 
feet  which  once  readily  bore  me  seven  miles  along 
that  road  ache  now  at  three.  All  of  me  ached  as  I 
walked  along.  I  cursed  desultorily  with  a  smooth 
whispered  flow  of  curses,  because  the  circumstances 
seemed  to  demand  it.    But  I  loved  the  walk — even 


54  -^  human  prerogative 

the  more  for  my  tired  feet  and  my  aching  knees  and 

my  irking  drooping  shoulders  and  the  hot  glazed 

sand  against  my  throat. 

My  Soul  tasted  realness  in  it. 

Quite  close  to  me,  in  immense  sad  beauty,  were  the 

deep  high  heavy  silent  somber  hills  of  Montana. 

To-day  the  nearer  ones  were  a  stately  enchanted 

Blue:  a  Blue  of  all  ages:  a  Blue  of  infinitude:  a  Blue 

with  a  feel  of  life  and  death  in  its  Blueness.     Above 

it  the  sky  was   not   blue  but  a   pale  glimmering 

shimmering  silver  hung  across  with  gray  silk  clouds 

soft  as  doves'  plumage. 

I  sat  on  a  flat  rock  and  looked  at  all  of  it  and  at  the 

desert  around,  and  at  my  dusty  shoes. 

All  of  it  felt  overwhelmingly  sincere:  at  one  with  the 

wide  worn  used  earth. 

My  dusty  shoes  looked  to  be  at  one  with  it  and  could 

interpret  it. 

I  felt  my  shoes  could  claim  their  human  prerogative 

of  getting  dusty  in  any  of  this  world's  roads. 

It  gave  me  a  feeling  of  human  Sincerity:  good-and- 

evil  Safeness. 

It  is  on  me  now,  along  with  cold  cream  and  strong 

memory  of  Desert  and  Sun  and  Blue. 

It  is  as  good  as  a  beef-sandwich. 

Better:   I  don't  like  beef-sandwich. 


The  merciless  beauty  55 


To-morrow 

SOMETIMES  the  dusk  is  full  of  fire. 
Some  dusks  I  sit  by  my  window  looking  out 
and  hotly  and  coldly  want  a  Lover:    hotly 
with  my  Body  and  coldly  with  my  Mind. 
A  dusk  has  just  gone.     I  sat  looking  out  at  it. 
A  mist  of  dark  cream  tinged  with  heated  violet  came 
from  nowhere  and  hung  above  the  ground. 
Suddenly    came    on    me    a    sense    of    bewildering 
mysterious  beauty. 

In  it  was  a  feel  of  rippling  warmth  that  crept  into 
my    bone-and-flesh    from    forehead    to    heel,    from 
temples  to  soles,  from  crown  to  toe-tips. 
It  crept  slow  and   suffocating   Hke    magic   chloro- 
form. 

I  leaned  elbows  on  window-sill  and  chin  on  palms 
and  sunk  my  gaze  in  the  violet  shades  outside  and 
straightway  knew  I  wanted  a  Lover:  not  in  delicate 
moonlit  culmination  like  Juliet  in  her  balcony:  not 
denyingly  like  the  timid  young  nun  in  her  cloister 
assailed  unaware  by  faint  forbidden  emotions. 
I  wanted  a  Lover  like  the  jungle  leopard  leaping 
through  the  Springtime  covert  at  nightfall  to  find 
her  mate. 

It  is  a  subtle  and  an  obvious  feeling,  made  of  a 
merciless  beauty. 


56  The  merciless  beauty 

It  is  the  tired  urge  of  sex-tissues  and  nerve-cells: 

positive,  furious,  fiery  as  the  bloodiest  sun. 

It  is  the  same  which  the  heated  leopard  feels  in  her 

sharp  immaculate  lust.     It  is  quite  the  same — but  it 

could  not  move  me  as  I  sat  alone  loverless  to  the 

knitting  of  an  eyebrow,  to  a  change  ""of  posture,  a 

movement  of  elbows  on  the  window-sill  or  of  palms 

beneath  my  chin.    Nor  could  it,  though  the  potential 

Lover  had  stood  outside  my  window. 

For  any  woman  of  any  charm  the  world  is  full  of 

Lovers :  each  and  all  to  be  had  by  the  flutter  of  her 

finger,  the  droop  of  her  white  eyelids,  the  trembling 

of  her  pink-bowed  lips.     The  world  is  full  of  them — 

facile  Lovers,  craven,  potent  and  pinchbeck.     And 

it*s  that  kind  I  want  hotly  with  my  Body,  coldly 

with  my  Mind  in  dusks  of  rippling  warmth — rippling, 

rippling  warmth — 

I  want  the  Lover  as  the  leopard  wants  hers.     But 

Fm  not  a  leopard:  instead,  a  woman-person  of  keen 

sentientness  and  wild  wistful   imagination.     So   I 

wouldn't  so  much  as  crook  a  finger  to  call  a  Lover 

to  me:  a  curious  nervous  inertia. 

It's  only  I  want  the  Lover  with  frantic  blind  cosmic 

ardors  inside  me. 

I  analyze  it  in  my  magic  Mind  and  find  I  would  call 

no  Lover.     I  analyze  farther  and  find  I'd  reject  all 

but  an  impossible  one-in-ten-thousand.    But  remains 


The  merciless  beauty  51 


the  desire,  hot  as  live  embers,  cold  as  hail. 

Sex  is  an  odd  attribute.     It  has  been  to  me  like  a 

blest  impediment  and  a  celestial  incumbrance  and  a 

radiant  curse. —  • 

When  I  was  seventeen  I  stood  on  a  threshold  and 

peered   curiously    into    a    dim-lit    strange-scented 

Room. 

It   was   unknown   to   me   then.     My   mind   alone 

bespoke  it.     As  I  stood  at  its  doorway  the  air  it 

wafted  out  touched  my  sense  with  only  the  lightest 

frayed-cobweb    contact,    unintelligible    and    unen- 

lightening.     I  had  lived  an  emptily  alone  girlhood. 

I  was  icily  virginal. 

At  five-and-twenty  I  crossed  the  Room's  threshold. 

I   breathed   lightly   the   odd   fragrance.     I    looked 

curiously  around.     I  touched  some  amorous-looking 

grapes   and  some   love-promising  apples  that  lay 

about:    I  bit  into^one  and  burst  a  grape  with  my 

finger    and    thumb.     I    gathered    a    weak-petaled 

flower  or  two.     I  gauged  the  Room  and  its  furnish- 

ments  and  was  unthrilled  by  anything  in  it.     Even 

bodily  it  left  me  unthrilled. 

Those  two  memory-mists  do  not  keep  me  in  the 

now-dusk  and  in  the  strength  and  terror  and  fire 

of  top-most  youth  from  wanting  a  sudden  Lover 

with  all  that's  in  my  Body. 

Love  has  naught  to  do  with  it.     Love  is  a  flame- 


58  The  merciless  beauty 

winged  Bird.  I  know  it.  I  know  the  values  of-  my 
life  and  of  me.  I  do  not  mistake  tapers  for  torches, 
ducats  for  louis  d'  ors,  vicarious  nepenthe  for  dream- 
less death. 

In  dusk-moments  my  bone-and-flesh  is  all  of  me  I'm 
sure  of.  It  begins  and  ends  in  this  earth.  It 
answers  the  violent  summonses  of  this  earth  and  its 
dusks. 

In  the  just-gone  dusk  I  felt  the  prickling  blood  flow 
to  my  finger-ends.  A  flood-tide,  blinding  red, 
surged  and  seethed  and  bubbled  and  pounded  at 
my  heart. 

*I  want  a  Lover — some  Lover' — I  murmured  to  the 
shadows  beyond  my  window. 
I  grew  breathless. 

The  spirit  of  my  flesh  rose  like  a  wind-blown  flame. 
A  loud  cry  rang  in  my  nerve-wilderness. 
That  moment  the  variant  analysis  which  always 
rides  with  me  stopped  dead. 

There  came  instead  sheer  feeling — the  merciless 
beauty. 

— a  man-person,  maybe — ^the  man  of  happy  un- 
analytic  brutality — ^to  be  suddenly  there  with  me: 
to  flash  into  my  shadowy  solitude  like  a  lightning 
bolt  and  burst  and  break  me. 

— a  quarter-hour  of  exquisite  wildness — restlessness, 
made  of  Star-flame  and  Lily-petal  and  Cloud-burst 


The  merciless  beauty  59 

on  Mountain-summits  and  Sea-waves  purple  in  a 

Stormy  Dawn — an  intolerable  hunger  and  esctasy — 

But  just  gone  and  I  sit  writing  it  in  the  pale  cast  of 

thought. 

But  breathlessly  I  recall  the  breathlessness  of  jt. 


6o  My  shoes 

To-morrow 

I  LOVE  my  Shoes. 
I  love  them  because  they  so  guard  my  feet. 
I  walk  many  a  mile  along  the  stone  pavements 
and  into  distant  odd  streets  and  on  open  roads  at 
the  outskirts  of  this  Butte. 
And  while  I  walk  I  think. 

I  think  things  of  a  great  many  kinds- — potent  and 
magic  and  mad.  The  act  of  walking  starts  an  engine 
in  my  sparkhng  infernal  mind.  And  the  weight 
and  the  sting  and  the  hurt  and  the  fascination  of  my 
walking  thoughts  bear  down  on  my  slim  feet  as  they 
carry  me  along.  And  the  hard-beaten  world  beneath 
them  feels  resentful  and  uncomplaisant  to  my  soles. 
And  then  I  look  down  at  my  Shoes  with  their  trim 
tailored  vamps  and  their  walk-worthy  soles  and 
instantly  my  feet  feel  secure  against  evil,  smartly 
protected  from  my  thoughts  and  from  the  world's 
surface:  my  thoughts  which  shoot  down  on  them 
out  of  my  devilish  brain  and  the  world-hardness 
beneath  them. 

To-day  I  was  walking  along  the  road  that  leads  up 
the  ever-wonderful  Anaconda  Hill — a  place  of  stones 
and  sand-wastes  and  hoists  and  scaffoldings  and 
mines  with  ten  thousand  digging  men  thousands  of 
feet  down  in  their  metallic  bowels.    Close  by  were 


My  shoes  6i 

melancholy  mulberry-toned  mountains  at  the  north- 
east. They  were  tragic,  triumphant,  grief-stricken, 
terrifyingly  beautiful.  Purple  clouds  hung  around 
them  like  mourning  veils.  I  can't  look  enough  at 
those — it  is  as  if  there  weren't  enough  looking-power 
in  my  human  gray  eyes. 

Presently  I  came  to  a  small  open  space  as  I  walked, 
a  toy  desert.  A  toy  desert  is  more  like  a  desert 
than  is  a  real  one.  The  sand  in  it  is  grayer  sand. 
The  stones  are  abrupter.  The  sun  is  flatter-looking. 
The  air  is  less  willing  to  furnish  breath  to  a  human 
being.  The  best  that  could  be  said  of  this  one  is 
that  it  was  intolerably  desolate.  I  looked  about 
and  about  it.  And  suddenly  I  was  afraid.  Afraid 
of  many  things:  afraid  of  grief-stricken  mountains: 
afraid  of  my  life  and  of  Me. 

I  leaned  against  a  yellow  ledge  of  rock  with  a  subtle 
sickening  faintish  feeling.  *  I  am  afraid, '  I  said  inside 
me,  *of  this  world  and  this  life,  and  of  all  things 
little  and  large — nerves  and  Christmas  days  and 
poetry:  toy  deserts  and  all.  How  can  I  cope  with 
it — I  alone?' 

Then  I  looked  down  at  my  Shoes  of  black  soft  dull 
leather  and  cloth,  buttoned  snugly  around  my  ankles 
and  with  tough  supple  soles  fit  to  take  me  to  Jericho 
and  back.  Thus  neatly  armored  I  felt  suddenly 
my  blue- veined  feet  need  fear  nothing  from  sand  and 


62  My  shoes 

stone  and  hardness  of  ground.    And  if  my  feet  are 

not  afraid — my  feet  which  bear  weights  of  all-of-me 

— ^why  should  afraidness  touch  my  spirit  which  is 

proud? 

There  will  be  always  Shoes  in  the  world:    stout 

stylish  serviceable  boots,  and  pale  delicate  rat-skin 

pumps,  and  satin  muIe-sIippers. 

And  always  I  shall  have  Shoes:  in  toy  deserts  I 

shall  have  black  strong  snug-buttoned  ones. 

I  looked  at  them  in  this  toy-desert  and  straightway 

I  wasn*t  afraid. 

It  has  been  often  Kke  that. 

So  I  love  my  Shoes. 


An  eerie  quality  63 


To-morrow 

WHEN  I  was  Ten  years  old  I  played  mar- 
bles *for  keeps,'  smoked  little  pieces 
of  rattan  buggy  whip  in  the  hay-scented 
barn  and  slid  *belly-buster'  down  long  winter  hills 
on  my  sled.  And  I  hammered  and  sawed  ruinously 
with  grownup  tools,  whistling  happily.  And  I 
played  with  dolls  absorbedly  for  hours  on  end. 
I  was  not  boyish  and  not  girlish. 
I  was  not  childish  except  for  an  oddly  hungry  child- 
heart. 

I  was  myself. 

So  long  ago  and  longer  I  consciously  owned  an 
eerie  quality  which  toppled  over  the  edge  of  my 
humanness. 
And  still  own  it. 


64  ^  helliad 


To-morrow 

THIS  noonday  as  I  sat  on  the  veranda  two 
young  lads  stopped  by  the  stone  coping 
which  borders  this  front  yard,  and  con- 
versed. One  was  eager-looking  and  about  eleven 
years  old.  The  other  was  perhaps  thirteen  and 
morose  and  he  had  a  small  rifle  which  he  polished 
with  a  bit  of  waste,  not  lifting  his  gaze  as  they  talked. 
Said  the  younger  boy:  *  Say- Frank,  I  could  *a'  had 
that  old  shot-gun  oflP  my  dad  if  I'd'  a'  went  after  it 
to  Rocker  that  time.  * 

*  Like  hell  you  could, '  said  Frank. 

'^  Say- Frank,   you    know  that    Winchester  o'   Billy 

O'Rourke's? — he  made  six  buH's-eyes  and  one  inside 

ring  with  it  day  'fore  yesterday.' 

*Like  hell  he  did,'  said  Frank. 

'Say- Frank,  Mexicans  and  Indians  can  get  a  guy 

ev'ry  time  with  a  long-distance  rifle  without  taking 

aim  through  the  sight.' 

*Like  heH  they  can,'  said  Frank. 

*  Say- Frank,  there's  a  kid  down  on  South  Arizona 
that's  got  a  Colt  automatic  that'fl  hit  without  him 
aiming  at  afl.' 

*  Like  hell  there  is,'  said  Frank. 

*  Say- Frank,  you  know  them  little  brass  machine- 
guns  the  militia's  got? — ^the  bores  o'  them  things  're 


A  helliad  65 

rifled  just  like  this.' 

*  Like  hell  they  are/  said  Frank. 

*  Say- Frank,  my  grandfather  in  Illinois  's  got  a 
bullet  in  him  he  got  at  the  battle  o'  Fredericksburg 
in  the  Civil  War.' 

*Like  hell  he  has,'  said  Frank. 

*  Say- Frank,  it  costs  a  hundred-thousand  dollars  to 
make  a  Krupp  gun  and  eighty  dollars  ev'ry  time  you 
fire  it.' 

*Like  hell  it  does,'  said  Frank. 

*  Say- Frank,  it  ain't  a  felony  to  croak  a  burglar  with 
a  gun  even  if  he's  only  breakin'  into  somebody  else's 
house.' 

*Like  hell  it  ain't,'  said  Frank. 

*  Say- Frank,  my  mother  goes  huntin',  too — she  can 
shoot  rabbits  and  ducks  on  the  wing  and  once  she 
got  a  deer  with  that  big  old  .44  o'  my  Uncle  Walt's.' 
*Like  hell  she  did,'  said  Frank. 

'Say- Frank — listen,  will  you  gimme  your  gun  for 
my   bicycle,    both   my   catcher's   gloves   and   four 
dollars  when  I  get  paid?' 
*Like  hell  I  will,'  said  Frank. 

*  Say- Frank — listen,  will  you  gimme  it  for  my 
bicycle,  my  two  catcher's  gloves,  four  dollars  when 
I  get  paid  and  my  shepherd  pup? ' 

*Like  hell  I  will,'  said  Frank. 

*  Say-Frank — listen, — and  my  artificial  snake?' 


66  A  helliad 

'Like  hell/  said  Frank. 

*  Say- Frank — listen, — and     my     half    o*     Ernest's 
camera?' 

*Like  hell,'  said  Frank. 

'Say- Frank — listen, — and     my     last    year's     shin- 
guards?* 

'Like  hell,'  said  Frank. 

'Say- Frank — listen, — and     my     this     year's     shin- 
guards?  ' 

'Like  hell/  said  Frank. 

'Say- Frank,  come  right  down  to  it  I  don't  want  a 
.22.    If  I  get  a  gun  this  year  it'll  be  a  .32.' 
'Like  he—' — 

Which  point  I  felt  to  be  the  too-note  of  the  helliad, 
so  I  rose  and  came  into  the  house. 
I  felt  replete  with  rhythm  and  with  a  sense  of  sur- 
prising human  attitudes  remote  from  my  own. 


Swijt  go  my  days  6-7 


To-morrow 

SWIFT,  Swift  go  my  days. 
By  rights  I  think  time  should  drag  with  me, 
for  I  am  wasting  my  portion  of  life  as  I  live 
it. 

But  my  days  pass  Swift — Swift,  Swift. 
They  come,  they  fly  away — before  I  know. 
Tm  thinking  it  is  Tuesday:   but  while  Tm  thinking 
— Wednesday  has  come:   and  gone:   and  Thursday 
is  rushing  in.    Tuesday,  blue-and-gold  or  gray-and- 
silver,  with  its  mornings  and  nights  and  bits  of  food 
and  openings  of  doors  and  thinkings:    Wednesday 
with  the  same  equipment:    Thursday  the  same. 
Each  day  comes  and  goes  like  a  flash  of  filmed  silvered 
garbled  hght. 

But  there  is  time  in  each  for  me  to  touch  the  en- 
chanted Every  day  ness :  time  for  the  turbulent  sly 
delight  of  tasting,  smelling,  feeling  the  eternal 
humors  and  romances  in  eacPi  small  thing  near  me — 
my  Clock,  my  Window,  my  Jar  of  Cold  Cream,  my 
Two  Thumbs.  There  is  time  in  each  day  for  it  to 
make  me  pay  a  wearing  ghmmering  feverish  homage 
to  the  mystic  daily  godhead. 
My  life  exacts  terrific  homages  from  me. 
I  am  wearing  out — frailly,  tiredly,  from  a  desolate 
uneasy  love  of  living. 


68  Swift  go  my  days 

It  is  why  my  days  go  Swift  when  by  rights  time 
should  drag  leadenly  in  punishment  for  barbarous 
futileness. 

There  is  not  time-space  enough  in  any  of  the  days 
sufficient  to  love  the  virile  green  and  the  murderous 
red  and  the  sweet  pale  surprising  purple  in  the  sunset 
above  the  west  desert:  nor  space  to  love  the  smell 
of  a  sudden  August  rain:  nor  the  flaming  delicate 
Idea  of  the  poet  John  Keats. 

While  I'm  starting  to  love  each  of  those  to  its  height 
of  love- worthiness — the  to-day  is  gone;  and  the  to- 
morrow, which  must  see  a  new  love-game  started  for 
each  Thing,  is  come. 
But  while  I  say  *is  come':  it's  gone. 
So  Swift  go  my  days — oh  Swift,  Swift  I 


By  the  blood  of  dead  Americans  69 


To-morrow 

SINCE  I  wrote  the  beginning  of  this  there  has 
come  the  war  in  Europe :  a  war  full  of  suffering 
brave  women  and  dead  children :  full  of  Ger- 
man greed  and  cruelty  and  stupidity  and  of  French 
gameness  and  cheerfulness,  French  splendor  of  valor. 
It  has  an  effect  of  some  kind  on  each  person  who 
reads  so  much  as  its  *  headlines.' 
It  has  the  effect  on  me  of  making  me  a  jealously 
patriotic  American. 

It  makes  me  think  of  Lexington  and  Gettysburg 
with  an  odd  furious  personal  shame. 
We  are  Americans  not  by  accident  but  by  the  blood 
of  dead  Americans.    But  we  assume  it  is  by  accident. 
We  lie  down  like  a  nation  of  bastards  to  let  the  pig- 
hearted  Hun  trample  by  proxy  on  our  neck. 
It  was  for  America  to  declare  war  in  the  same  hour 
the  Lusitania  passengers  met  murder. 
We  were  not  'too  proud'  but  afraid.    Afraid  and  not 
ready. 

Not  ready  has  no  right  thing  to  do  with  it. 
They  were  not  ready  at  Lexington. 
I  long  with  some  passion  to  exchange  my  two  black 
dresses  for  two  white  ones  with  red  crosses  on  the 
sleeves :  to  serve  my  country  in  a  day  of  death  and  honor. 
It  too  is  all  the  time  under  my  skin  though  I  write 
along  but  in  this  flawed  song  of  myself. 


70  To  express  me 


To-morrow 

I  SUPPOSE  Im  very  lonely. 
It  is  luck — luck  from  the  stars — not  to  be  beset 
by  clusters  of  people,  people  who  do  their  think- 
ing outside  their  heads,  *  cheerful'  people,  people  who 
say  *  pardon  me':  all  the  damning  sorts  scattered 
about  obstructing  one's  view  of  the  horizons. 
But  for  want  of — other,  other  people — I  am  intensely 
lonely. 

When  I  was  eighteen  I  thought  I  must  be  the  most 
lonely  creature  in  this  world.  I  analyzed  my  life 
then  as  now  and  it  by  itself  had  set  me  apart.  But 
I  stood  then  as  it's  given  Youth  to  stand — on  High 
Ground.  I  was  strong  to  endure  loneliness  while 
viciously  hating  it.  There  was  unaware  a  hope- 
colored  bliss  in  my  inexperience  which  companioned 
me.  I  felt  it  then  without  knowing  I  felt  it.  I  can 
see  that  plainly  now. 

Now  also  I  see  plainly  and  feel  plainly  that  I  stand 
on  lower  ground,  at  poorer  vantage.  As  my  bodily 
strength  which  was  then  robust  is  now  slight.  The 
metaphysic  life-shadows  reach  me  more  easily. 
They  have  a  feel  of  fatally  shutting  down,  fatefully 
closing  in.  They  are  the  mirages  on  the  dun-colored 
worldly  air  near  me  of  my  own  useless  untoward 
selves.     There  is  no  more  the  hope-colored  bliss. 


To  express  me  71 

At  eighteen  I  said  to  me:  ^Fm  lonely  but  some  day 
I  may  be  happily  friendshiped  and  apprehended  and 
it  will  be  like  paradise.' 

Now  I  say  to  me:  'Fm  lonely  by  fate  and  by  nature 
and  temperament.  I've  known  some  friendships  of 
vivid  alluringness  and  informingness — they  await  me 
now  in  the  ofFmg.  And  others.  There  is  paradise 
in  it — an  odd  sweet  dubious  paradise.  But  what's 
the  use — ?' 

It's  that  what's-the-use,  born  of  the  lower  vantage- 
ground  and  the  closing-in  shadows,  that  chiefly 
makes  me  lonely — lonely  to  a  desperateness  and  on 
through  to  a  ruinous  calm. 

It  is  this  metaphysic  loneliness  which  breeds  in  me 
one  constant  reasonless  restless  urgent  motif:  to 
Express  me:  not  of-the-past  except  desultorily,  not 
of-the-future  save  indiff'erently:  but  of  my  low- 
toned,  low-echoing  now.  Until  I've  Expressed  me 
there's  no  setting  open  the  gates  of  my  spirit  to  a 
passer-by,  though  the  passer-by  should  be  a  poet- 
in-the-flesh,  a  god,  an  angel  with  a  torch. 
Four-and-twenty  turbulent  moods  may  break  over 
me  in  a  day,  or  four-and-twenty  passive  ones,  or 
four-and-twenty  someway  joyous  ones.  But  like 
the  theme  in  a  fugue  this  loud  tranquil  recurrent 
need  to  Express  me  transcends  them  all. 
It  is  a  big  voracious  part-human  bird  of  prey.    Of 


72  To  express  me 

it  too  I  say  what's-the-use.  But  it  is  a  need  without 
a  use,  a  need  scornful  of  use.  It  springs  uncon- 
ceived,  unsourced  from  inside  me.  It  rises  from  the 
ashes  of  blightingest  moods  and  beats  its  bruising 
strong  wings  against  my  face. 

It  says:  *Know  me,  defer  to  me.  Slim- woman. 
Serve  me,  follow  me,  gather-in  all  your  answers  for 
me.  Do  this  though  I  undo  you,  though  I  rend  you, 
tear  you  with  my  sharp  teeth  so  like  a  woIPs. 
When  youVe  answered  me  I  may  let  you  go.  Until 
then,  turn  to  me.  Tell  me:  tell  me  again  and 
again.  Utter  yourself.  Interpret.  Unfold.* 
It  makes  my  life-space  someway  sweet,  someway 
heartbreaking,  someway  frightful — strewn  with  dust 
of  broken  stars. 

I  live  long  hours  of  nervous  profound  passionate 
self-communion.  I  discover  strange  lovely  age- 
worn  facets  of  my  Soul.  I  discover  the  subtle 
panting  Ego — the  wonderful  thing  that  lives  and 
waits  in  its  garbled  radiance  just  beneath  my  skin. 
To  ask  oneself  and  make  answer  out  of  oneself  is 
the  most  delicious  of  this  life's  mental  delectations. 
I  might  have  missed  it  but  for  those  beating  bruising 
wings  against  my  face,  now  and  years  ago:  for 
expressing  breeds  the  last  Expressions. 
I  might  have  gone  on  through  years  and  decades 
and  lumps  of  months  knowing  at  best  a  little  of 


To  express  me  73 

some  rare  person,  a  little  less  or  more  of  another  rare 
person,  a  little  of  a  musician's  soul  in  a  nocturne, 
a  little  of  a  dead  poet's  splendors.  But  to  Me  and 
my  own  fine  spirit-relationships  to  those  things  I 
could  remain,  but  for  my  radiant  flawed  egotistic 
interpreting,  eternally  strange. 
But  for  it  Vd  not  have  the  wit  to  perceive  the  one 
human  being  in  the  world  I  may  know  with  vitalness : 
my  own  Self.  I  should  drop  into  my  grave  at  last 
without  a  good-by  to  the  glowing  one  who  was  locked 
just  inside,  whose  hand  I'd  never  clasped,  whose  sad 
prescient  eyes  I'd  never  looked  in,  who  was  then 
flitting  out  and  on  and  away. 

It  is  a  being  cruel  and  transfiguring  and  terrifying: 
terribly  worth  clasping  close  and  breathing  with. 
And  some  days  it  sleeps,  sleeps  like  the  dead:   it  is 
delicater  than  rose- vapors  before  the  dawn:   a  sun- 
blown  faery  thing. 

When  it  sleeps  I'm  left  alone.     Then  comes  a  doubt- 
ful dreadful  quiet,  a  hefl  of  dumbness  that  only  God 
could  reach. 
It  is  as  if  neither  God  nor  I  attempts  to  cope  with  it. 


74  Bastard  lacy  valentines 


To-morrow 

THE  thing  I  admire  most  is  strength.  The 
thing  I  most  hate  is  Weakness,  of  each  and 
every  kind. 
All  the  reassuring  things  in  the  world  are  in  and  of 
the  strong  deeds  done  in  it.  All  the  mischief  and 
despair  come  from  human  Weakness, 
I  would  better  strongly  murder  my  foe  than  forgive 
him  Weakly  for  my  seeming  advantage.  I  would  be 
happier  in  my  mind  as  a  careful  charwoman  than  as 
a  loose-jointed  poet.  I  would  rather  have  a  farthing's 
value  as  a  faithful  concubine  than  no  value  as  a 
slattern  housewife. 

Strength  repays  itself  with  strength — and  with 
magnificence.     . 

Truth  is  strength  nearly  always:  and  not  always. 
To  cheat  strongly  in  the  life-game  gets  me  more  than 
does  Weak  easy  honesty.  By  being  a  strong  man 
Napoleon  brought  home  the  bacon.  Being  an 
honest  one  would  have  got  him  not  one  rasher  of 
the  bacon  of  bis  desire.  The  race  is  too  ridden  with 
*  temperament'  to  let  truth  be  its  prevailing  force. 
But  strength  plows  its  scornful  way  through  tem- 
perament like  a  steam-shovel.  The  bacon  Napoleon 
brought  home  he  took  from  other  people,  causing 
them  misery.    They  were  Weak  and  let  him  take 


Bastard  lacy  valentines  y^ 

it,  or  they  were  strong  and  got  killed  trying  to  keep 
it.  To  get  killed  trying  to  keep  your  bacon  is  to  be 
even  stronger  than  the  Napoleon  who  lives  and  takes 
it  from  you.  Those  who  sit  still  and  let  Napoleon 
get  their  bacon  are  fit  only  to  be  themselves  made 
into  bacon. 

Truth  belongs  with  love,  with  friendship,  with 
charity,  with  psychic  lovingkindness ;  with  all  the 
altruistic  graces  and  tendernesses. 
But  in  the  mere  grinding  livingness  of  things  it  is 
to  be  strong.  I  say  to  Me,  *Mary  MacLane,  be 
strong:  whether  you're  living  joyous  on  a  hill  or 
mournful  in  a  valley,  make  shift  to  be  strong.' 
In  which  paragraphs  I  make  an  apologetic  preamble 
to  Me  when  about  to  dwell  on  my  odd  ironic  element 
of  Weakness.  My  Weakness  is  not  an  art  nor  a 
,  science  nor  a  gift  nor  a  trait  but  is  a  sort  of  ruinous 
trade  touched  with  all  of  those,  a  trade  at  which  I 
work  and  lose  heavily  from  a  viewpoint  of  personal 
economy. 

In  Atlanta-Georgia  lives  a  man  with  whom  I  ex- 
change semi-occasional  letters.  He  is  thirty-nine 
and  clever  and  what  is  called  a  business  man.  He 
is  a  business  man  not  only  by  circumstance  but  by 
nature.  At  a  glance  one  would  picture  him  in  the 
setting  of  an  office  in  a  steel-and-brick  building 
with  a  roll-top  desk,  a  swivel  chair,  a  cabinet  full 


76  Bastard  lacy  valentines 

of  files,  a  stenographer  with  an  unregenerate  vo- 
cabulary, and  stationery  neatly  engraved  with  his 
name,  his  business,  his  cable  address  and  his  tele- 
phone number.  The  look  of  the  neat  letterhead 
and  the  fibrous  feel  of  the  bond  paper  give  one 
the  idea  that  whoever  went  into  a  business  venture 
with  him  would  come  out  of  it  disadvantageously. 
After  another  glance  at  himself  one  would  infer 
that  his  leisure  hours  might  be  fancifully  spent. 
In  hours  of  ease  some  business  men  follow  base- 
ball, others  golf,  *  tired'  ones  musical  comedy. 
Others  take  up  curio  collecting  or  some  personal 
phantasm.  In  the  latter  category  is  my  acquain- 
tance of  Atlanta.  He  affects  Mary  MacLane  and 
musings  of  her  in  his  leisure  hours.  But  what  I  am 
to  him  does  not  concern  nor  much  interest  me. 
What  he  is  to  me  concerns  me,  for  he — his  letters — 
are  a  present  source  of  my  elaborated  Weakness. 
I  feel  a  wave  of  conscious  Weakness  washing  over 
me  as  I  write  about  it.  His  letters  make  a  soft 
buffer,  a  foolish  pretty  window,  a  tinted  veil  between 
me  and  my  too-harsh  actualities. 
I  met  him  when  I  lived  in  New  York.  He  had  read 
the  book  I  wrote  in  the  early  nineteen-hundreds  and 
at  meeting  me  he  conceived  a  thinly  insistent  admi- 
ration which  someway  went  to  his  head.  He  has  at 
intervals  since  then  written  me  letters  full  of  charmed 


Bastard  lacy  valentines  77 

and  salubrious  flattery  and  of  appreciation  and  praise 
for  traits  and  gifts  and  qualities  which  I  do  not 
possess.  They  appeal  and  cater  remarkably  to  my 
vanity — and  are  pleasant  and  unreal  and  vain  and 
fatuous  and  fond  and  piquant. 

He  is  a  clever  man  and  does  not  make  love  to  me. 
A  butcher 's-boy  may  write  love-letters — and  Td 
prefer  those  of  a  butcher's-boy  to  those  of  a  business 
man :  they  would  be  more  sincere  and  less  hopelessly 
discreet.  But  this  business  man  is  discerning  and 
intuitive  and  writes  me  no  love.  His  wife — a 
business  man  always  has  a  wife — could  not  rationally 
object  to  what  is  in  the  letters,  though  she  would 
irrationally  and  naturally  object  to  the  letters 
themselves.  She  is  unloving  and  unloved — they 
always  are — but  whatever  may  be  her  caste  (I  know 
only  that  she  is  tall  and  blonde  and  named  Bertha) 
she  doubtless  would  find  something  superfluous  in  the 
idea  of  her  husband's  letters  to  me. 
A  letter  comes  from  him  in  Georgia  after  I  have 
written  him  a  brief  disquieting  one  with  a  latent 
human  appeal  in  it  to  make  him  think  the  chief 
thing  I  need  in  life  is  his  appreciation,  his  attitude 
toward  me,  to  brace  my  spirit.  Then  his  comes, 
written  in  his  small  slanting  commercial  hand.  It 
is  arresting  from  any  angle  and  well  thought,  well 
couched. 


78  Bastard  lacy  valentines 

In  it  he  tells  me  that  my  brain,  scintillantly  brilliant 
though  it  is,  needs  the  dim  twilights  of  other  brains 
such  as  his  to  catch  the  sparks  it  throws  off. 
Which  is  a  lie.  My  brain  is  not  scintillantly  brilliant 
and  it  'needs'  nothing.  But  the  lie  is  agreeable  to 
read.  There  is  a  gentle  caressingness  in  its  untruth 
which  feels  someway  soothinger  than  any  flattering 
fact. 

And  he  tells  me  my  chief  attraction  as  an  individual 
is  my  ability  accurately  to  gauge  another  individual 
and  to  breathe  myself  graciously  out  to  it  and  upon 
it  while  pretending  to  be  immersed  in  my  own  ego. 
Which  is  another  lie.  Immersed  in  my  own  ego  is 
never  a  pretense  with  me,  and  I  have  not  gauged — 
in  the  sense  of  weighing  and  measuring — another 
individuality  except  to  hate  it.  But  it  is  piquantly 
restful  to  hear  that  I  am  thus  benign. 
And  he  tells  me  that  though  several  years  have 
passed  since  he  and  I  took  leave  of  one  another  he 
has  never  forgotten  that  last  parting  because  it 
was  like  the  passing  of  a  little  weir-woman  who 
brushed  him  lightly  with  her  garments  as  she  went. 
Which  is  another  lie.  My  association  with  him  was 
in  brief  meetings  at  hectic  studio  tea-fights  and  two 
noisy  dinners  at  Churchill's,  at  all  of  which  I  frowned 
impatiently  at  his  tiresome  conversation.  And  his 
leave-taking  with  me  consisted  in  his  sharpening 


Bastard  lacy  valentines  79 

a  lead-pencil — beautifully  he  sharpened  it — for  me 
to  write  a  telegram  with.  It  was  not  until  this 
correspondence  that  we  established  an  unreliaP^Ie 
intimacy.  But  to  be  told  I  seemed  a  weir-woman 
to  a  hard-headed  business  man  who  could  doubtless 
cheat  a  client  out  of  four  thousand  dollars  easily  in 
a  half-day's  maneuvering  is  oddly  inspiriting. 
And  he  tells  me  he  is  highly  privileged  to  be  permitted 
to  gaze  in  at  the  mezzo-tinted  windows  of  my  soul, 
which  are  surely  curtained  against  the  passing 
proletariat. 

Which  is  another  lie.  He  has  never  remotely 
glimpsed  my  tired  Soul  in  the  firmly  false  little 
letters  I've  written  him.  As  to  its  being  a  privilege 
if  he  had:  it  is  the  proletariat,  it  so  happens,  who 
have  first  chance  at  those  windows,  which  are  not 
mezzo-tinted  but  made  of  the  plainest  of  plain  glass. 
But  the  conceit  tastes  mellow  and  naif  and  bromidic 
and  appetizing  to  me,  like  cream  and  raspberries  in 
July. 

And  he  tells  me  the  most  delightful  thing  in  the 
world  would  be  to  live  near  me  and  have  a  season 
of  daily  meetings — meetings  of  astral  selves  upon  a 
*  higher  plane'  whereon  we  should  exchange  those 
flowers  and  fruits  of  the  spirit  which  grow  not  from 
the  soils  but  from  the  esoteric  essences  of  life: — 
that  sort  of  thing. 


8o  Bastard  lacy  valentines 

Which  is  another  lie.  No  possible  man  (except  a 
Poet  whom  I  loved — or  perhaps  a  scientist — ) 
could  find  me  delightful  for  more  than  two  con- 
secutive meetings — I  develop  something  like  temper 
— and  I  care  for  no  higher  planes  except  in  airships. 
As  for  esoterics — I  would  fainer  exchange  musings 
anent  over-shoes  than  over-souls.  And  my  spirit 
bears  in  fertile  earthy  soil  chiefly  thistles  from  which 
men  gather  no  figs.  But  it  gives  me  a  warmish 
feeling,  similar  to  a  hot-water  bottle  between  my 
shoulders  on  a  winter  night,  to  read  that  picturesque 
palaver  written  to  me  in  my  slim  scorn  by  him  in 
his  springy  swivel  chair. 

Thus  it  goes.  His  letters  are  made  all  of  softest 
quaintest  lies  which  I  know  to  be  lies  the  moment 
my  gray  gaze  falls  on  them.  All  his  premises  in 
regard  to  me  and  his  deductions  from  them  are 
roundly  lightly  mistaken.  But  I  like  that  fluent 
flattery  the  more  because  it  is  so  false.  I  am  too 
vain  a  creature  to  want  to  cope  often  with  truths 
even  though  they  might  be  uplifting  self-Iauding 
truths.  My  vain  peculiar  Weakness  demands  as 
wefl  semi-occasional  collations  of  creamed  lies  upon 
which  it  feeds  like  a  sleek  cat  on  creamed  fish.  My 
humor  enters  into  it,  in  no  obvious  way  but  eerily 
like  a  gay  ghost.  My  humor  is  a  strong  influence  in 
me.     It  is  stronger  than  my  pride  and  anger  and 


Bastard  lacy  valentines  8i 

fear  and  caution  and  reverence  and  self-love — 
stronger  than  most  things  I  own. 
And  it's  for  reasons  of  pastime  and  vanity  and 
oblique  humor  I  let  letters  from  the  business  man 
come,  though  not  often,  into  my  solitudes.  And 
I  spend  hours  of  inert  time-waste  conning  his 
fanciful  ideas.  And  the  letters  I  write  him  in  reply, 
though  brief  and  impersonal  and  done  in  my  best 
false  manner,  consume  a  surprising  lot  of  time  and 
mental  and  physical  force  to  write.  It  is  the  Weak- 
ness in  it  which  is  so  devouring:  it  eats  me  hungrily 
and  lingers  about  like  a  buzzard,  picking  my  bones. 
A  spinelessly  Weak  game.  I  hate  its  Weakness  more 
than  I  like  its  pleasant  futility.  I  hate  it  and  myself 
in  it  all  the  time  I'm  dwelling  on  it.  I  hate  it  as  I'd 
hate  a  little  drug  habit  fastened  on  my  nerves. 
Its  influence  is  the  same  but  more  insidious  than  a 
drug  would  be,  more  demoralizing.  As  feeling  fear 
makes  one  afraid,  feeling  more  fear  makes  one  more 
afraid. 

Still  once  in  a  month,  once  in  a  two- month,  I  feel 
the  hankering  itch  to  be  applauded  for  second-rate 
quahties  I  do  not  own,  and  I  give  way  to  it:  in  a 
particularly  Weak  way,  after  my  sanest  self  has 
reduced  it  analytically  to  shreds,  and  after  saying 
bosh!  with  all  my  selves. 
After  telling  Me  too  that  it  is  a  common-tasting 


82  Bastard  lacy  valentines 

game.  Life  is  a  strange  music-clangor  of  gold  bells, 
some  silent,  some  far-echoing.  And  the  common- 
tasting  thing  cracks  a  bell-edge. 
Then  briskly  I  answer  the  last  letter  from  Atlanta- 
Georgia  and  soon  there  comes  a  fresh  sheaf  of  smooth 
velvetish  lies  to  pad  my  way. 

There  may  come  no  more  if  this  I  write  now  should 
find  its  way  to  Atlanta-Georgia.  Or  if  fate  or 
Bertha  should  intervene. 

But  always  I  know  Weakness  of  me  will  find  ways 
to  work  at  its  losing  trade. 

It  is  of  the  dubious  inevitable  side  of  human  nature 
— like  gold  teeth  and  tinned  salmon  and  bastard 
lacy  valentines 


Sweet  fine  sweatings  of  blood  83 


M 


To-morrow 

ERELY  from  the  view-point  of  outward 
intellect  this  book  of  myself  is  oddly  difficult 
to  write. 

My  most-loved  thing  to  do  and  mv  hardest  thing  to 
do  is  to  write. 

It  is  hard  to  catch  and  hold  with  mental  fingers  one's 
own  emotions  and  then  doubly  hard  to  write  them. 
A  feeling  is  something  without  the  words  and  without 
even  the  thought.  To  put  it  into  the  thought  and 
then  into  the  words  is  a  minuter  task  than  would  be 
the  translating  of  a  Frangois- Villon  poem  into 
Choctaw. 

It's  a  knowing  person  who  realizes  her  own  emotions 
and  a  knowinger  who  recognizes  what  is  what,  who 
is  who,  which  is  which  among  them.  I  look  inward 
at  Me  and  I  see  an  emotion  of  World- Weariness  and 
want  to  write  it.  I  write  it  as  nearly  as  I  can.  But 
when  I  have  done — it's  not  World- Weariness  that  I 
wrote  but  its  twin-sister,  Boredom-of-the-Moment, 
which  happened  to  be  next  the  other  when  I  looked. 
I  am  glad  to  have  transcribed  Boredom-of-the- 
Moment.  It  is  the  finer  and  thinner  and  more 
elusive  of  the  two.  But  how  and  why  did  I  fail  of 
World- Weariness? 
But  sometime  when  I  aim  at  Fear  or  Resentment  or 


84  Sweet  fine  sweatings  of  blood 

Surprise  ft  may  be  World- Weariness  Til  bring  down 
unexpectedly  with  a  clean  wing-shot. 
When  I  set  out  to  write  the  Look-in-my-Eyes  it 
may  be  the  Feel-of-my-Fingers  that  comes  out  in 
my  round  writing.  Another  time  I  think  Fm 
writing  my  Bad-Tooth:  until  I  get  it  written  when 
it  turns  out  to  be  my  little  Eye- Wrinkles. 
Having  failed  of  the  thought  often  I  fail  of  the  words. 
When  I  have  a  particularly  M.-Mac-Lane  thought 
to  express  I  review  the  top  tier  of  my  vocabulary 
of  words  to  find  proper  ones  for  it.  They  are  all 
very  nice  words  in  that  top-tier — neatly  washed  and 
dressed  and  hair-brushed  and  tidied-up,  like  the 
children  in  a  small  private  school:  words  like 
Necessary  and  Irresolute  and  Crockery  and  In- 
convenience and  Broth  and  Apprise:  good  words 
and  useful  if  one's  thought  is  radical  or  risky  and 
wants  conserving.  I  call  some  of  them  to  me  and 
question  them  and  consider  them  and  ponder  a  bit, 
and  decide  they  will  none  of  them  suit.  Then  I  go 
t©  the  bottom  tier,  the  unkemptest  of  words  in  the 
untidiest  attire:  words  like  Traipse  and  Nab  and 
Glim  and  Hennery  and  Chape  and  Plash.  And  I 
at  once  reject  those  as  too  carelessly  bred  for  my 
terse  thoughts  to  associate  with.  (But  for  my 
uncombed  ungroomed  grimy-faced  thoughts  I  turn 
to  them.)     Then  I  glance  over  a  tier  of  mysterious 


Sweet  fine  sweatings  oj  blood  85 

words,  spruce  but  with  indefinable  vagabond  faces: 
such  as  Whelk  and  Mauger  and  Frush  and  Gnurl 
and  Yare  and  Hyaline.  They  are  expressive  but  of 
a  kind  it*s  well  to  use  with  caution,  the  kind  that 
may  trip  up  thoughts  that  would  make  them  their 
medium  and  lead  to  slips  'twixt  cups  and  lips.  So 
I  dismiss  them  with  a  mental  reservation  of  one  or 
two  to  use  if  I  fail  to  find  right  ones  among  the  less 
mysterious.  Then  I  turn  to  a  tier  that  represents 
the  virile  middle-class  in  words,  the  lower-case 
words,  the  mob  and  riot  words,  the  words  for  poets 
and  anarchists  and  prophets:  such  as  Adroit  and 
Nightingale  and  Gallows  and  Gutter  and  Woman 
and  Madrigal  and  Death.  And  I  say,  'Without 
doubt  here  are  my  words.'  But  I  use  discretion. 
I  know  that  tier  of  words  to  be  of  the  nature  of 
bombs,  of  strychnine,  of  a  dynamic  force  resistible 
against  all  human  and  wordly  substance.  They  also 
must  be  used  cautiously  and  with  a  sparing  hand. 
With  caution  one  can  handle  a  bomb,  and  sparingly 
one  can  eat  strychnine,  and  one  can  control  any 
dynamic  force  by  studying  its  tendencies  and 
keeping  out  of  its  direct  road.  It  behooves  one  to 
heed  those  conditions  in  broaching  the  counter- 
mining counter-irritant  words  if  one  would  avoid 
blowing  oneself  analytically  broadcast. 
So  I  may  have  found  the  right  sort  of  words  and 


86  Sweet  fine  sweatings  oj  blood 

measured  their  possibilities  and  pitfalls.  But  again : 
it's  a  nerve-racking  task  to  choose  out  one  word 
from  seven,  one  from  five,  one  from  two.  I  see  two 
words  which  may  be  the  only  proper  ones  out  of 
ten  thousand  to  bear  my  thought.  The  two  may 
be  Echo  and  After-glow,  each  an  unacknowledged 
half-sister  to  the  other:  meaning  respectively  some- 
thing living  and  growing  and  vibrant  in  my  spirit- 
ears,  and  fading  and  dying  and  radiant  before  my 
spirit-eyes.  But  because  my  spirit-ears  may  glow 
bright  and  hot  from  what  they  heard,  or  my  spirit- 
eyes  may  seem  to  themselves  to  gaze  a  moment  at 
a  soundless  sound — an  Unheard  Melody  of  Keats, — 
I  miss  the  raylike  distinction  and  I  write  After-glow 
when  my  true  word  was  Echo. 
But  another  time  I  write  Echo  perfectly  and  master- 
fully to  my  own  delight:  having  meant  After-glow. 
So  it  is.  There's  no  plain  sailing  on  this  analytic 
sea.  And  if  there  were  it  would  be  not  worth  while. 
I  want  nothing,  nothing,  nothing  that  comes  easily. 
What  comes  easily  I  distrust,  be  it  love  or  language. 
It  afterward  proves  dead-sea  fruit.  What  I  suffer 
to  get  I  know  to  be  life-food  even  if  it  drugs  or  pains 
or  poisons  me.  It  is  one  lesson  I  have  learned. 
Without  doubt  it  is  so  with  everybody,  all  around. 
One  sees  only  surfaces,  husks.  Anyone  looking 
casually  at  this  Me  sitting  writing  might  say,  *How 


Sweet  fine  sweatings  oj  blood  87 

easily  and  smoothly  and  well  she  writes.  How  kind 
of  God  to  give  her  so  light  a  task  in  life.  How 
complacently  go  her  working  hours.'  And  I  looking 
casually  at — oh — Miss  Lily  Walker  singing  and 
swaying  and  glancing  sideways  in  a  gorgeous  Broad- 
way chorus — I  might  say,  *How  easy  a  task  in  life 
has  that  brainless  gazelle.  To  work  with  her  body 
and  not  even  with  the  sweats  and  sinews  of  it  like 
a  scrub-woman,  and  not  with  the  facile  shames  of 
it  like  a  lorette,  but  with  the  grace  and  suppleness 
and  beauty  and  suggestions  of  it,  aided  by  a  soprano 
throat  and  a  soprano  face — with  only  the  effort  it 
wants  to  fling  it  all  over  footlights.  And  that 
pastime  gets  her  her  livelihood.' 
But  whoever  marks  me  writing  as  one  doing  an  easy 
task  because  I  write  along  rapidly  enough  considers 
nothing  of  my  mental  travail  for  the  thought,  my 
blind  grope  for  the  language,  my  little  nervous 
anguish  of  choice  among  the  double-edged  and 
triple-pronged  words:  and  the  neat  concise  failure 
of  the  result. 

And  no,  I  do  not  thus  comment  on  Miss  Lily  Walker. 
I  have  an  appreciative  pleasure  in  her  charm  and 
suppleness  and  bird-and-butterfly  prettiness.  But 
after  a  bit  of  contemplation  and  analysis  of  her 
surface  I  deduce  the  unconscious  struggle  it  may  be 
for  Miss  Lily  Walker  to  be  supple  on  nights  when 


88  Sweet  fine  sweatings  of  blood 

she  does  not  feel  supple,  the  thin  agony  of  being 
sweet  when  she  does  not  feel  sweet,  the  neurotic 
torture  of  being  seductive  regularly — by  the  night: 
the  more  that  perchance  the  struggle  always  is 
unconscious.  Her  brain  being  required  in  her  body 
it*s  to  be  assumed  there*s  none  in  her  head.  But  I 
can  deduce  a  nervous  red  heart  beating  illogically 
somewhere  in  her  being  protesting  dumbly  some- 
times against  one  irking  item,  sometimes  against 
another,  sometimes  against  all  the  items  in  Miss 
Lily  Walker's  scheme  of  life,  but  beating  and  beating 
on,  like  a  little  automatic  drum  wound  up  tight  and 
tossed  into  a  maelstrom  to  beat  itself  out. 
rd  like — like  with  breathless  eagerness — to  read  the 
analyzed  being  just  beneath  Miss  Lily  Walker's  skin. 
Everybody — every  human  being — is  wildly  Real: 
radiant  and  desolate. — 

With  no  amount  of  temperamental  struggling  could 
Miss  Lily  Walker  analyze  a  psychic  emotion  of  her 
own  and  then  find  the  right  word-combination  to 
write  it  in. 

With  no  conceivable  effort  of  mine  could  I  manage 
to  be  supple  when  I  do  not  feel  supple. 
So  Miss  Lily  Walker  and  I  are  quits  at  this  game. 
It  totals  up  evenly,  all  ways  around. 
Nobody  gets  through  one  Real  day — though  it  be  a 
dayful  of  Real  lies — without  a  demoniacal  struggle 


Sweet  fine  sweatings  oj  blood  89 

of  soul  or  a  heavy  blow  on  the  personal  solar  plexus. 
And  I  make  not  even  the  intellect  side  of  this  book, 
which  is  a  Realness  to  me,  without  sweet  fine  sweat- 
ings of  blood. 


go  Instinct — a  'first  law* 


To-morrow 

I  LONG  to  do  a  Murder. 
Despite  my  futile  way-of-Iife  and  my  rotting 
destroying  half-acquiescence   in   it   I   have   a 
furious  positive  Murder  in  me. 

One  near  me  in  my  daily  life  injures  me  and  goes  on 
injuring  me  in  a  way  which  is  scourging  and  malicious 
and  intensely  petty.  There  is  in  it  helpless  humili- 
ation for  me — me  self-Ioving,  proud  and  determinedly 
unsuppliant — ^and  it  makes  maddening  Murder  rise 
in  me. 

I  don't  know  why  I  do  not  do  the  Murder.  I  have 
nothing  to  lose  by  paying  the  law-penalty:  nothing 
but  my  life,  and  my  life  is  stripped  bare — ^and  was 
always  barren  by  God's  decree — of  all  that  makes  a 
life  sacred  or  lovely  or  precious.  For  long  years  and 
years,  since  child-days,  I  have  been  lost. 
I  don't  know  why  I  do  not  do  the  Murder:  except 
that  I  think  of  it  and  brood  over  it  and  turn  it  round 
and  round  smoulderingly  in  my  Mind.  From  no 
choice.  I  have  tried  to  push  the  feehng  away  as  a 
common  thing  beneath  me.  It  is  beneath  me,  for 
I  am  not  little  but  someway  big.  But  my  Mind 
will  take  its  toll  of  all  that  confronts  me. 
The  humihation  and  the  helplessness  to  combat 
being  humiliated  in  me  who  keep  a  casual  proudness 


Instinct — a  *  first  law*  91 

toward  people  is  like  a  secret  hot  sword  thrust, 
and  kept  freshly  thrust,  in  my  flesh.     It  makes  me 
wild  to  do  the  Murder.    But  it  makes  me  brood 
over  it  till  the  red  act  is  lost  in  red  brooding. 
There  come  also  thinkings. 

Murder,  any  Murder,  is  in  its  essence  cowardly,  a 
slinking  meanness.  And  I  am  not  cowardly  and  I 
am  not  mean.  I  am  above  malice  and  retaliation — 
all  such  impoverished  impoverishing  emotions. 
A  shrug  of  my  shoulders  and  they  are  satisfied. 
The  impulse  to  hit  back  after  a  bitter  wound  is  not 
of  vengeance.  It  is  instinct — a  *  first  law.'  But 
Murder  is  self-accusingly  cowardly  and  sneakingly 
human.  I  can't  get  away  from  that.  To  take  away 
a  person's  life  is  like  setting  fire  to  his  house — an 
officiously  stooping  act.  It's  for  me  to  live  my  life 
in  aloof  self-sufficience.  No  human  malice  should 
reach  me  in  it.  Then  it's  not  for  me  to  reach  out  of 
it  and  stain  my  good  fingers  with  unpleasant  sticky 
blood.  I  am  always  in  a  prison  of  radiance  and 
gloom. 

But  the  mere  habit  of  being  a  human  being  is  break- 
ingly  insistent — no  matter  how  many  or  how  few 
frocks  one  owns.  Neither  of  my  two  dresses  is  a 
protection  against  humiliation.  A  thin  black  serge 
dress  gives  me  to  myself  a  melancholy  cold  inert 
air:    but  beneath  the  smooth-fitting  breast  of  it 


92  Instinct — a  *  first  law' 

comes  too  often  a  throbbing  frightful  to  feel,  fright- 
ful to  know,  made  of  fierce  petty  anger  and  abasing 
hurt.  I  hide  it  and  me  in  my  room  and  twist  my 
hands  together  and  walk  my  floor,  and  a  hurricane 
of  helpless  bitter  trifling  woe  shakes  and  wrenches 
me.    Then  Murder  enters  me. 

What  humiliates  me  is  an  obvious  common  thing 
that  to  any  human  one  would  mean  hurt  and  more 
hurt.  Though  I  am  determinedly  brave  I  am 
sensitive. 

I  do  not  write  itself  because  this  is  the  book  of  me 
and  not  of  people. 

It  is  a  slight,  a  poor  and  vivid  cruelness.  There  is 
the  tie  of  blood  in  it  which  in  all  ways — from  a  deep 
heritage — I  respect:  and  it  rubs  an  added  stinging 
poison  in  the  wound. 

It  is  an  injury  I  do  not  deserve.  What  I  deserve  I 
accept.  What  I  do  not  deserve  pressed  on  me  to 
humiliate  me  makes  Murder  in  me.  Regardless  of 
the  other  one — 

— it  would  be  simpler  and  finer  for  me  to  do  that 
Murder  than  to  keep  it  in  me.  So  many  times  in  a 
week  the  trembling  smothering  longing  to  do  that 
Murder  beats,  beats  in  my  thin  breast.  To  be  so 
owned  by  a  thing  so  small: — it  is  grief  and  despair 
and  fury  and  wild  nervous  intolerableness.  It  strains 
my  flesh — it  wrenches  my  pulse — it  blinds  my  eyes — 


Instinct — a  'first  law*  93 

it  fills  my  throat — 

— it  would  be  a  simpler  and  finer  thing  to  do  any 
Murder  than  to  feel,  even  once,  the  strangling 
damnedness  rising,  rising  at  my  throat — 


94  Loose  twos 


To-morrow 

I  TAKE  ft  for  granted  God  knows  all  about  me. 
If  God  should  read  this  it  would  not  be  news 
to  him. 
But  his  knowledge  of  me  is  not  immediate  knowledge 
nor  immediately  interesting  to  him.  He  knows  my 
Twos-and-Twos  but  he  does  not  make  Fours  of 
them. 

I  am  formed  of  loose  Twos  which  wait  for  God  to 
make  them  Fours. 

I  can  not  do  it  myself.    When  I've  tried  the  added 
Twos  come  out  threes,  seventies,  nines,  twelves — 
all  the  mysterious  numbers.    Never  Fours. 
Long  ago  I  decided  not  to  try  but  to  wait  for  God. 
I    juggle    with    temperamental  and  psychic  Twos 
and  experiment  in  hysteric  additions. 
But  it's  no  good  my  trying  to  make  Fours. 
If  God  does  not  take  it  up  I  shall  be  eternal  Twos. 
And  I  seem  not  greatly  to  care:  whenever  that  comes 
home  to  me  I  merely  light  a  carefree  cigarette. 


Knitting  or  plaiting  straw  g^ 


To-morrow 

THE  things  I  know  are  jumbled  and  tangled 
into  an  indescribable  heap  inside  me. 
The  things  I  Don't  Know  are  separated 
and  ranged  of  their  own  volition  in  long  orderly  rows 
in  my  conscious  mentality. 

The  things  I  know  glow  with  tints  and  gleams  and 
will-o'-wisp  lights  and  primal  colors  and  waveringly 
with  the  blinding  gold-purple  lightnings  of  all-Time. 
The  things  I  Don't  Know  glow — each  one  separately 
— with  a  small  precise  lantern-brightness  of  its  own. 
Also  in  my  wide  background  are  things  I  don't  know 
and  am  unaware  of  it:    the  mass  of  my  luminous 
Ignorance — it  shines  with  an  earthy  phosphorescence. 
When  I  look  at  the  things  I  know  I  get  an  undetailed 
perspective  of  me  hke  a  bird's-eye  view  of  London. 
When  I  look  at  neat  formal  rows  of  things  I  Don't 
Know  I  have  a  clear  look,  as  if  through  an  uncur- 
tained window  into  a  bare  little  room,  at  my  quietest 
self  sitting  knitting  or  plaiting  straw. 
I  reckon  up  and  count  up  and  check  up  lists  of  big 
and  little  things  I  Don't  Know — hke  this,  rapidly: 
I  Don't  Know  what  ink  is  made  of,  nor  how  to  fire 
a  Maxim  gun:    I  don't  know  how  to  make  a  will: 
I  don't  know  how  to  cook  a  prairie-chicken,  nor  what 
to  feed  a  pet  weasel,  nor  who  invented  the  snarling- 


g6  Knitting  or  plaiting  straw 

iron,  nor  what  it  is. 

I  Don't  Know  what  food  people  eat  in  the  Himalaya 
Mountains,  nor  how  Lord  Cofwallis  felt  when  he 
surrendered:  I  don't  know  the  color  of  a  chicken's 
gizzard,  nor  of  sand,  nor  of  fish-scales,  nor  of  mice: 
I  don't  know  whether  an  English  cabinet  minister 
needs  strength  of  mind  or  strength  of  will,  or  both, 
or  neither. 

I  Don't  Know  how  I  hurt  the  true  heart  of  my 
friend:  I  don't  know  astronomy  nor  solid  geometry: 
I  don't  know  what  I  think  with:  I  don't  know  what 
ooze  leather  is,  nor  who  pitched  for  the  Tigers  in 
nineteen-nine. 

I  Don't  Know  a  good  horse  from  a  bad  horse:  I  don't 
know  why  a  bat  sleeps  head  downward,  nor  what 
wasps  live  on:  I  don't  know  how  to  open  oysters, 
nor  how  to  milk  a  cow:  I  don't  know  the  Latin  for 
'whiskey.' 

I  Don't  Know  whether  friendship  is  a  selfish  or  an 
unselfish  thing,  nor  who  discovered  the  medlar 
apple:  I  don't  know  what  is  a  jab,  fistically  speak- 
ing, nor  a  punch,  nor  a  hook,  nor  a  wallop,  nor  the 
fighting  weight  of  Packey  McFarland:  I  don't 
know  whether  a  moth  *  marries'  or  whether  her  eggs 
are  impregnated  like  a  fish's:  I  don't  know  why  a 
clasp  knife  is  called  a  jack  knife,  nor  what  to  do 
for  an  aching  foot. 


Knitting  or  plaiting  straw  97 

I  Don't  Know  how  glass  is  blown:  I  don't  know 
whether  coal  is  vegetable  or  mineral:  I  don't  know 
the  chemical  composition  of  the  sunset  vapors,  nor 
how  to  play  euchre:  I  don't  know  how  many  guns 
an  armored  cruiser  carries,  nor  whether  a  gorilla 
meditates:  I  don't  know  whether  I  hate  or  greatly 
admire  Catherine  and  Marie  de  Medici:  I  don't 
know  a  winch  from  a  windlass. 
I  Don't  Know  where  is  the  cinnamon  bear's  native 
haunt:  I  don't  know  how  flint  is  mined,  nor  if  wire 
is  made  of  steel:  I  don't  know  who  was  the  better 
man — William  Wordsworth  or  the  Duke  of  Wel- 
lington: I  don't  know  the  advantages  of  tariff 
revision  downward :  I  don't  know  where  ex- President 
Taft  will  go  when  he  dies. 

I  Don't  Know  whether  I  feel  more  comfortable  with 
or  without  my  stays :  I  don't  know  the  origin  of  the 
word  *  dogged':  I  don't  know  whether  a  *full  house' 
is  better  than  *two  pairs,'  nor  whether  a  right  merry 
heart  to-day  is  better  than  a  wrong  contented  mind 
to-morrow:  I  don't  know  whether  rabbit-pie  is 
made  of  cats  in  Paris,  nor  how  many  sails  has  a 
sloop :  I  don't  know  what  makes  a  dead  body  rot. 
I  Don't  Know  how  to  sharpen  a  carving  knife,  nor 
how  to  roll  a  cigarette:  I  don't  know  the  real 
English  meaning  of  the  French  noun  *elancement*: 
I  don't  know  whether  my  sex  is  a  matter  of  my 


98  Knitting  or  plaiting  straw 

genital  organs  or  of  my  mental  inwards:  I  don't 
know  how  to  determine  the  contents  of  a  circle  in 
square  inches,  nor  how  to  pronounce  'zebra/ 
I  Don*t  Know  whether  Edgar  Allan  Poe  is  big  or 
little:  rdon*t  know  how  many  soldiers  fell  at  Shiloh: 
I  don't  know  whether  temperament  or  nature  or 
circumstance  makes  one  woman  a  happy  kindhearted 
whore  and  another  an  unhappy  cruel-hearted  nun: 
I  don't  know  how  to  grow  artichokes :  I  don't  know 
what  brimstone  is,  nor  how  to  play  the  accordion: 
I  don't  know  what  quality  in  me  forms  my  hand- 
writing. 

I  Don't  Know  what-Iike  was  my  Soul  in  the  Stone 
Age:  I  don't  know  whether  cheese  is  good  or  bad 
for  my  health:  I  don't  know  what  becomes  of  dis- 
carded hairpins,  nor  a  tooth-brush's  ultimate 
destiny:  I  don't  know  the  *Fra  Diavolo'  opera,  nor 
whether  anyone  ever  uses  the  word  *  thwack.' 
I  Don't  Know  whether  my  heart  breaks  from  within 
or  without:  I  don't  know  whether  *good  old  Marie 
Lloyd'  of  the  London  *  halls'  has  a  brain  like  G.  K. 
Chesterton  or  a  dexterous  individuahty  like  a 
juggler:  I  don't  know  whether  I  feel  spiritual  bliss 
in  my  knees  or  in  my  spirit:  I  don't  know  why  I 
breathe  and  go  on  breathing. 

I  Don't  Know  what  became  of  the  ten  lost  tribes  of 
Israel:  I  don't  know  how  to  say  how-do-you-do  to  a 


Knitting  or  plaiting  straw  99 

king:  I  don't  know  the  exact  meaning  of  my  terror 
and  despair:  I  don't  know  why  I  love — why  I  ever 
love — 

I  Don't  Know  whether  laws  of  chance  govern  a 
spinning  roulette  wheel  and  ivory  ball  or  whether 
chance  is  beyond  law:  I  don't  know  what  kind  of 
missile  a  Krupp  gun  shoots:  I  don't  know  how  a 
ground-and-Iofty  tumbler  turns  a  triple  air-summer- 
sault: I  don't  know  whether  I  really  am  the  way  I 
look  in  the  mirror:  I  don't  know  whether  the  Russian 
language  has  Romanic  roots:  I  don't  know  what  is 
the  wild  power  in  poetry. 

I  Don't  Know  whether  lust  is  a  human  coarseness 
or  a  human  fineness:  I  don't  know  why  death  holds 
a  so  sweet  lure  since  it  would  take  away  my  Body: 
I  don't  know  that  I  wouldn't  deny  my  Christ,  if 
I  had  one,  three  times  before  a  given  cockcrow: 
I  don't  know  on  the  other  hand  that  I  would: 
I  don't  know  whether  honor  is  a  reality  in  human 
beings  or  a  pose :  I  don't  know  that  I  mayn't  be  able 
to  think  with  my  Body  when  it  is  in  its  coffin. 
I  ^Don't  Know  what  makes  each  day  a  Day  of  dark 
Gold  and  life  mournfully  precious:  I  don't  know 
where  is  God:  I  don't  know  how  they  make  tea  in 
Ireland:  I  don't  know  how  to  pronounce  the  word 
'girl':  I  don't  know  how  to  make  lace:  I  don't 
know  whether  I  hear  a  sound  or  feel  it,  nor  why  a 


100  Knitting  or  plaiting  straw 

spool  of  thread  looks  exactly  like  a  Spool  of  Thread. 
I  Don't  Know — I  Don't  Know — I  Don't  Know, 
rapidly,  to  the  end  of  the  mystic  common-place 
infinitudes. 

— those  give  me  a  clear  look,  as  if  through  an  un- 
curtained window  into  a  bare  little  room,  at  my 
quietest  self  sitting  knitting  or  plaiting  straw — 


A  life-long  lonely  word  loi 


To-morrow 

FLEETING  times  I  wonder  if  it  is  my  defect 
or  others'  that  no  human  family  tie  holds 
and  warms  me. 
There  is  none.    I  think  about  it  with  wistfulness. 
The  only  tie-of-blood  feeling  that  clings  to  me  is  of 
my  warming  and  keeping-alive.     And  it  is  very 
feeble.     It  grows  more  feeble. 
It  is  a  trivial  matter  as  I  look  at  it  universally. 
But  as  I  look  at  it  earthlily:    there  would  be  an 
abnormalness,  a  lostness  in  one  when  the  mother 
who  bore  her  got  from  it  at  best  but  a  small  cool 
dislike.  ' 

It  makes  me  feel  humanly  lost. 
*Lost'  is  the  shuddering  life-long  lonely  word  that 
brushes  against  me  some  nights  and  noons. 


102  Their  voices 


To-morrow 

EVERY  day  at  half-past  ten  and  half-past  two 
I  hear  the  high  shrill  sweet  choric  Voices  of 
hundreds  of  children  shaking  the  thin  clear 
air. 

A  public  school  is  but  a  block  from  here.  The  chil- 
dren rush  out  of  it,  a  hilarious  noisy  crowd,  for  a 
few  mid-morning  and  mid-afternoon  minutes.  So 
those  minutes,  from  hearing  their  Voices  day  after 
day,  and  day  after  day,  have  become  lyric  to  my 
inner-listening. 

Their  Voices  stir  me,  rouse  me,  speak  to  me  with 
old  very  joyous,  very  woful  meanings. 
The  children  fairly  leap  out  of  the  school-building 
through  doors  and  down  fire-escape  stairways. 
And  their  Voices  are  at  once  hurled  skyward, 
clamorous  and  chaotic. 

The  Sound  they  make  is  a  roundly  common  sound 
yet  *  winged.'     It  is  an  untrammeled  Sound,  un- 
cultivated, only  a  little  civilized. 
It  is  world-music. 

In  it  is  the  note  beyond  culture,  higher  than  civili- 
zation, and  older.  It  is  brave  as  voices  of  the  shrill- 
ing winds  and  warmer,  viriler.  It  is  liltinger  than 
bird-songs  and  lustier  than  roarings  of  mountain 
cataracts. 


Their  voices  103 

Music  of  the  world! — 

A  little  door  inside  me  opens  to  those  Voices. 
My  little  door  opens  at  the  first  shriek  of  the  first 
child  out  of  doors,  and  I  hear  not  only  the  hundreds 
of  vivid   piercing   Voices   but   more — their   far-off 
echoes. 

They  are  the  Voices  of  children,  children  light-held 
in  crude  cold  innocence.  The  eyes  of  the  children 
are  clear — their  impulses  and  instincts  rule  their 
little  lives.  They  are  yet  untouched  by  the  tiredness 
and  terror  and  shame  and  sorrow  of  being  human 
beings. 

So  the  Sound  of  their  Voices  sweeps  out  resistless 
and  regardless  as  the  sea  or  the  sun  which  makes 
nothing  of  its  own  strength  or  weakness.  And 
through  my  little  spirit-door  I  hear  them,  the 
poignant  common  little  sweet  Voices,  echoing, 
flying  away,  farther  and  farther:  along  the  roads: 
over  plains  and  hills:  through  valleys  long  worldly 
distances  from  here:  through  streets:  through  stone 
buildings  and  dingy  courts :  through  big  rich  houses : 
through  homes  of  comfort  and  homes  of  misery  and 
homes  of  desolate  smugness:  into  lifeless  social 
foyers:  into  learned  places:  into  law-courts  and 
cabinet-rooms  of  nations:  into  graveyards  and 
churches  and  down  into  dead- vaults:  into  theatres: 
into  clinics:   into  shops:    into  factories:  into  dives 


104  Their  voices 

and  stews  and  brothels  and  at  lustful  doorsteps: 
into  hotels  and  on  sport-courses:  into  market- 
places and  across  battle-fields,  round  monuments 
and  in  towers  and  in  forts  and  in  prisons  and  in 
dungeons: — there  along  fly  their  Voices. 
It  is  a  brave,  brave  Sound,  and  an  insistent:  nothing 
stops  it. 
It  is  triumph. 

The  noise  of  the  noisiest  battle  dies  away  in  time. 
The  pounding  of  ocean-surf  on  the  rocks  and  of 
electric  thunder  in  the  clouds  are  lasting  only  with 
this  earth.  But  brave  wild  Voices  of  children  fly 
on  and  on,  outlasting  a  million  earths,  silencing 
aeons  of  thunder,  floating  strongly  back  of  the  stars. 
The  voices  of  men — wizards,  monks,  artisans^ 
thieves — echo  no  farther  than  their  talking  conceits : 
even  of  poets  except  as  they  catch  up  into  their 
sonance  something  to  interpret  a  cool  gay  clamor  of 
child- Voices.  The  voices  of  women — singing  women, 
lovely  women,  angelic  honest  women — die  with 
their  bodies :  even  of  mothers  of  the  children  except 
as  they  follow  with  their  own  echo,  by  dream  and 
shadow,  the  thronging  child- Voices  as  they  go. 
For  the  Sound  of  the  child- Voices  is  more  potent 
than  wizards* — it  is  not  cramped  into  thought-forms: 
more  devotional  than  monks'  because  super- 
conscious;    more  menacing  than  thieves'  because 


Their  voices  105 

absolute.     And   it   echoes,    echoes,   echoes   in   the 
market-place  full-tongued,   ringing,   rising  like  the 
northern  gale  when  all  the  other  voices  are  long 
dead-silenced:  and  after. 
Music  of  the  world. 

This  moment  I  hear  it  for  it  is  half-after  two  of  a 
bright  gold  day.  The  air  is  emotional,  nectareal, 
and  mellow  and  yellow  and  hot-sparkling.  The 
Voices  pierce  it  like  a  storm  of  fine  steel  arrows. 
I  at  once  set  open  my  spirit-door  and  through  it 
come  the  sweet  shrill  chorus  and  the  marvel  echo 
beginning  and  swelling  and  starting  away.  It 
wakes  vision  so  that  I  see — quick,  evil,  terribly 
human,  in  the  dazzlingest  daytime  colors — all  those 
Places  where  the  Voices  go. 

I  go  to  a  window  and  watch  the  children  running 
about  beneath  the  high  tide  of  their  Voices.  And 
they  and  the  school-building  and  the  streets  and 
stone  walls  show  in  duller  colors  than  the  Places 
where  their  Echo  goes. 

— small  girls  with  clipped  hair  and  bloused  cotton 
frocks,  taller  girls  throwing  a  basket-ball,  thin- 
legged  little  girls  playing  hop-scotch,  groups  of 
varied  sizes  with  rainbow  ribbons  in  their  hair, 
confused  masses  of  knitted  sweaters  and  fat  white- 
stockinged  legs  and  shiny  leather  belts  and  ankle- 
strapped  shoes,  and  little  young  shoulders  and  knees 


io6  Their  voices 

and  waistlines — restless  and  kaleidoscopic — 
— and  confused  boy-groups — little  fellows  in  suits 
misnamed  Oliver-Twist,  larger  boys  of  serge-Norfolk 
persuasion,  types  of  the  generic  knickerbocker  at 
once  motley  and  monotonous — all  with  the  strong 
sturdy  calves  of  their  legs  clad  in  a  time-honored 
kind  of  black  ribbed  stockings,  all  with  the  same 
breed  of  ties  and  collars  and  short-cropped  hair,  all 
with  the  tacit  air  of  confessing  themselves  the  most 
serenely  cruel  of  all  animals — 
A  careless  conscienceless  happy  mob. 
It  is  the  Sound  of  their  Voices  that  invests  them  with 
the  terrifying  Power,  the  long  world-sweeping  Force 
as  of  spirit  and  matter  merged,  the  human  radio- 
activity not  evil  and  not  good,  stronger  than  all 
evil  and  all  good. 

Those  children  I  look  at  must  cease  to  be  children, 
and  must  lose  their  Voices  and  grow  into  monks  and 
thieves  and  singing  women — must  turn  into  persons 
— *  Romans,  countrymen  and  lovers. ' 
But  will  come  after  those  another  chorus:  the  same 
chorus:  the  same  Voices. 

The  brief  yellow  mellow  minutes  have  passed  and 
the  last  shout  has  been  silenced  and  the  hundreds 
of  children.  Rainbow  Hair-Ribbons  and  Black 
Ribbed  Legs,  are  again  gathered  into  the  McKinley 
School. 


Their  voices  107 

And  my  little  door  is  shut  again;   that  door  opens 

but  for  those  Voices. 

The  Voices:  their  echo  flying  everywhere  flies  here 

into   my  still  room:  and   it  stirs   me,   rouses   me, 

speaks  to  me  with  the  old  joyous  woe. 

Music  of  the  world. 


io8  My  damns 


To-morrow 

I  BEAR  the  detailed  infliction  of  being  a  person 
with  a  tired  mixture  of  patience  and  indifference 
and  scorn. 
I  say  on  Monday,  Damn  the  ache  in  my  left  foot: 
on  Tuesday,  Damn  that  rattling  window — I  hate 
it:  on  Wednesday,  Damn  this  yellow  garter — it*s 
too  tight:  on  Thursday,  Damn  my  futile  Hfe:  on 
Friday,  Damn  the  soHtude:  on  Saturday,  Damn 
these  thoughts :  on  Sunday,  Damn  my  two  dresses. 
But  I  pronounce  each  day's  Damn  in  a  half-per- 
functory half-preoccupied  tone,  more  from  duty  and 
fitness  than  from  conviction.  I  intently  mean  each 
Damn,  but  the  scornful  indiff'erent  patience  which  is 
my  spirit-essence  leavens  each  one.  I  swear  at  my 
Hfe*s  perversities  with  only  a  fatigued  contempt  due 
partly  to  bodily  fragileness  but  mostly  to  a  cold 
continently  reckless  mood  which  is  clasped  on  me 
like  a  strong  stupefied  devil-fish.  In  this  mood  I 
should  murmur  the  same  gelded  Damn  if  I  found 
myself  penniless  and  foodless  in  strange  streets :  if  I 
became  suddenly  deaf:  if  my  Body  were  being  lashed 
with  whips  or  raped  by  a  Mexican  bandit.  I  should 
murmur  the  same  worn  Damn  if  I  were  this  moment 
on  a  gallows  with  the  rope  around  my  neck  and  life 
were  dearly  madly  precious. 


My  damns  109 

I  mark  that  with  my  musing  regrets.  I  remember 
in  the  strong  young  furies  of  eighteen  each  new  day 
of  my  life  was  filled  with  passionate  poetic  blas- 
phemy, protests  and  rebellions  of  youth.  Those 
were  not  tired,  not  acquiescent,  not  indifferent  to 
slings-and-arrows,  but  firey-blooded  quick-pulsed 
breathless  brave  young  Damns. 
There  is  splendor  in  being  brave  in  a  fighting  attitude, 
but  in  being  brave  through  indifference  there  is  no 
splendor. 

But  it  is  only  toward  calamity  and  adversity  and 
worldly  untowardness  that  I  feel  indifferent.  Fight- 
ing blood  is  stirred  in  me  if  not  against  the  hated 
things  then  for  the  loved  things.  I  could  fight  and  I 
could  die,  and  love  it,  to  save  poet-lusters,  poet- 
fineness,  poet-beauty  from  the  world's  flat  griefs. 
In  that,  which  I  feel  warm  and  real  and  sparkling 
in  my  blood,  in  some  splendor  for  me. 
— and  also  I  could  die  for  my  country:  and  there  is 
fighting  hatred  stirred  in  me  against  its  foes — 
But  in  poetry  there  is  nothing  that  evokes  a  lusty 
curse  against  its  vulgar  adversaries.  Poetry  floats 
too  high  upon  its  dazzling  wings.  I  get  delicately 
drunk  from  watching  it  tiH  I  can  see  the  wings* 
Gold  Shadow  touch  its  foes  and  magically  split 
them  into  dust-atoms. 
So  then  the  morale  of  my  Damns  remains  per- 


no  My  damns 

functory. 

But  they  are  apt  and  useful.  They  fit  into  the 
nervous  rhythms  of  my  life.  They  mark  time  in  my 
spirit's  flawed  action.  I  begin  each  day  with  a 
Damn  of  sorts.  I  end  each  day  with  a  Damn  of 
sorts.  At  midday  sometimes  it's,  *Damn  the  terri- 
fying ignorance  of  people.'  In  the  dusk  a  deep-felt 
Damn  of  the  blood.  In  the  night  another.  And 
at  my  late  eating  time  a  negligible  Damn. 
A  wonderful  word,  Damn.  It  means  enough  and 
not  too  much.  It  means  everything  in  life,  and 
roundly  nothing. 

Without  Damn  my  day  would  lack  tone.  Damn 
richly  justifies  each  pronouncement  of  itself  in  word- 
value,  substance-value  and  musical  resonance. 
It  harms  nobody  and  it  helps  me.  It  destroys  noth- 
ing and  it  strengthens  me.  It  damages  my  an- 
noyances and  mends  me  somewhat. 
But — perfunctory,  desultory,  tiredly  insolent,  it 
would  be  thrilling  to  think  the  hot  fire  would 
sometime  be  back  in  my  Damns.  Better  that  than 
Youth's  faith  in  my  dreams.  Better  that  than  the 
jeune-fille  beauty  in  my  hair.  Better  than  even 
Youth's  ichor  in  my  veins:  Youth's  fire  in  my 
Damns — 

But  there  is  dearness  in  this  mood,  which  is  indif- 
ferent and  scornful  and  slightingly  patient,  though 


My  damns  1 1 1 

it  wants  splendor.  Let  my  Damns  be  always  brave, 
always  contemptuous  of  disaster  to  me,  and  they 
will  be  first-water  value  though  their  kind  alter 
never-so. 


112  To  God,  care  of  the  whistling  winds 


To-morrow 

THIS  morning  came  a  letter  from  a  half- 
forgot  friend  in  London.  She  is  in  vaudeville 
and  has  been  booked  for  two  months  in  the 
Music  Halls.  Her  letter  is  of  a  tenor  productive 
of  a  letter  in  turn.  But  I  am  somehow  not  free 
to  write  letters  to  friends  while  Tm  living  in  my 
two  plain  dresses.  So  I  wrote  this  letter  to  God 
instead: 

19th  November. 
Dear  God: 

I  know  you  won't  answer  this  letter.  I'm  not  sure 
you  will  get  it.  But  I  have  the  feeling  to  write  you  a 
letter,  though  it  should  only  blow  down  the  whist- 
ling winds. 

I  haven't  a  thing  to  ask  of  you:  no  prayer  to  make. 
I  am  not  suppliant  nor  humble  nor  contrite.  Nor 
would  I  justify  myself  as  a  person  in  your  eyes. 
I  scorn  to  try  to  justify  myself.  What  I  am  I  am. 
If  I  am  a  bad  actor  I  take  the  results  of  it  without 
plaint.  I  comment  on  it — why  not? — since  cats 
may  look  at  kings  and  each  person  inherits  four-and- 
twenty  hours  a  day.  But  I  am  bewildered  and 
distraught  and  sad. 

The  best  you  do  for  me,  God,  when  I  think  of  you — 
you  personally — is  to  make  me  bewildered  and  dis- 


To  God,  care  of  the  whistling  winds  113 

traught  and  sad. 

But  I've  imagined  I  could  put  myself  to  you  as  a 
proposition  to  take  or  to  leave  as  you  like:  on  my 
terms  since  I  do  not  know  yours. 
There  are  some  verses — ^the  Rubaiyat — in  which  you 
are  upbraided  as  if  you  might  be  the  dealer  in  some 
gambling  game  who  had  the  long  end  of  all  the 
wagers  and  still  so  protected  his  money  that  he 
could  not  lose  however  the  cards  turned. — 'from 
his  helpless  creature  be  repaid  pure  Gold  for  what 
he  lent  him  dross-allayed.' — *thou  who  didst  with 
pitfall  and  with  gin  beset  the  Road  I  was  to  wander 
in—.' 

But  to  me  that  seems  a  cheap  attitude  toward  you, 
God.  I  admit  you  are  fair.  If  I  thought  you  weren't 
my  mind  would  not  vex  itself  with  you  at  all.  I  can 
not  make  you  out  a  crooked  dealer  nor  one  who 
lends  out  bad  money  and  demands  good  money  in 
repayment. 

But  you  are  reticent  and  cold-tempered  and  un- 
interested. So  it  seems.  The  necklace  which  you 
gave  me  so  long  ago,  made  of  little  curses,  I  wear 
always  round  my  spirit-neck.  It  serves  some  pur- 
pose, perhaps,  and  it  answers  as  a  keepsake:  so  at 
least  I  may  not  forget  you  whether  or  not  you  for- 
get me.  I  don't  ask  any  more  of  your  attention  nor 
anything  more  of  you  than  I  would  be  willing  to 


114  To  Gody  care  of  the  whistling  winds 

give  you  in  return.  But  I  wish  you  would  be  willing 
to  exchange  attention  with  me.  I  am  lonely.  I  am 
terrified.  I  am  frightfully  overshadowed  by  myself 
and  my  odd  aloofness  and  my  thronging  solitary 
emotions  and  my  menacing  trivialities.  I  am  always 
fearing  not  that  I  may  be  wicked  or  immoral  or 
aUied  with  evils — I  don't  really  care  a  tinker's 
curse  about  that — but  that  I  may  be  growing  petty 
and  trivial  and  weak.  It  is  horrible,  horrible  to  feel 
that  I  may  be  a  weakling — you,  God,  may  not  know 
how  horrible  to  me.  It  is  like  black  annihilation  for 
all  eternity  when  my  Soul  longs  frantically,  desper- 
ately to  live.  I  feel  weakness  to  be  the  only  im- 
moralness — hateful  and  vile  in  whatever  aspect. 
I  want  to  be  strong  to  endure  and  to  live  in  noonday 
lights  and  to  overcome  my  poorness.  I  want, 
though  Fm  far  from  it,  to  be  brave  and  big.  What 
I  admire  you  for,  though  you're  so  far  off  and  strange 
and  inexplicable,  is  that  you  are  strong.  You  are 
Strength,  you  are  Light,  you  are  the  Solution  and  the 
Absolute.  You'd  hardly  know  what  weakness  is  if 
it  did  not  so  crop  out  in  this  human  race  you  made. 
This  human  race  is  a  faerily  beautiful  thing:  star- 
flaming  poets  have  sung  in  it:  lovely  youth  has 
breathed  upon  it:  happy  wild  hearts  have  informed 
it.  But  the  odd  keynote  of  it  all  is  weakness.  And 
I  have  felt  me  tuned  overmuch  by  that  keynote. 


To  God,  care  of  the  whistling  winds  115 

— but  I  won't  be  weak,  I  won't  be,  I  won't  be,  God! 
Whether  you  pay  attention  or  not,  whether  I  breathe 
only  futileness,  I  will  be  strong,  strong,  strong  in 
myself — strong  if  only  in  my  falseness — strong  and 
strong  again — 

This  would  be  your  chance  with  me  if  you  cared  to 
take  it:  because  I  own  now  just  my  plain  two  dresses. 
When  I  grow  out  of  this  quiet  mood — (if  ever  I  do: 
I  begin  to  doubt  it) — I  shall  have  more  dresses, 
and  then  I  shall  think  about  them,  God,  and  the 
phases  of  life  they'll  build  up  around  me,  and  not 
about  you.  It's  not  that  pretty  frocks  would  take 
my  attention  away  from  you  if  you  once  claimed 
it.  Once  you  claimed  my  attention  it  would  be 
yours  forever.  But  pretty  frocks  would  mean  I 
am  again  walking  in  paved  peopled  roads.  Being 
there  without  your  attention  I  shall  go  where  my 
garments  may  lead  me  forgetful  of  you.  One's  life 
is  of  the  flavor  of  one's  clothes:  *the  wine  must  taste 
of  its  own  grapes. ' 

Now  feels  like  a  fitting  time  for  you  to  be  personal 
with  me,  to  give  me  a  sign  that  you  know  I'm  here. 
I  know  I  am  blind  and  ignorant  about  that.  You 
may  know  a  time  that  shall  be  more  fitting,  a  time 
when  my  still  mood  and  two  dresses  are  long  gone 
and  my  life  is  made  of  fluff  and  hghtness  so  your 
sign  will  crash  into  it  like  a  black  two-ton  meteor. 


Ii6  To  God,  care  of  the  whistling  winds 

I  only  tell  you  how  it  seems.    If  you  should  come  now 
and  speak  to  me  I  should  feel  suddenly  glad.    To-day 
feels  such  a  day-of-God.    The  sky  is  all  wet  silver 
and  the  air  a  thin  cloud  of  gold.    I  sit  writing  you  by 
my  window,  often  looking  out  with  my  forehead 
resting  against  the  cool  pane.    There  is  an  ache  in 
my  forehead,  in  my  insteps,  in  my  backbone  and 
in  my  spirit.     By  stopping  in  here  a  moment  you 
would  gladden  me.     If  you  could  give  me,  or  show 
me — where  it  perhaps  had  always  been — one  true 
thing  to  have  always  in  my  life  I  should  cling  to  it  and 
ask  nothing  of  it  but  that  it  remain  true.    If  you'd 
make  me  one  far-off  promise  of  a  dawn  to  come 
after  this  tired  darkness  I  would  take  your  word  for 
it  and  would  walk  toward  your  dawn  in  a  straight 
road  from  which  I  should  not  ever  turn  aside.    In  me 
is  a  small  torch  glowing  though  set  in  chaos.    By  its 
light  I  should  keep  in  the  road  leading  to  your  dawn. 
I  should  keep  in  it  at  any  sacrifice  to  my  merely 
human  self:  any  sacrifice,  believe  me. 
It  isn't  a  bargain  I  would  make  with  you.    I  don't 
like  the  thought  of  a  bargain  with  you.     I  would 
rather  take  the  chance  and  lose  honestly:    not  in 
everything  but  in  this  matter  with  you.    You  show 
me  the  road  and  I  take  it  for  the  sole  reason  that 
it's  a  true  one.    I  should  expect  myself  to  pay  the 
tolls — heavy  ones  since  I'm  innately  a  liar,  a  some- 


To  God,  care  of  the  whistling  winds  117 

way  bad  lot.  I  know,  the  same  as  I  know  one  and  one 
make  two,  that  IVe  only  to  be  square  in  the  human 
business  of  living  to  get  back  a  square  deal,  though 
ril  get  badly  battered,  with  it.  But  it  isn't  what 
I  mean.  Something  inside  me  hungers  for  answer- 
ingness — a  Gleam — to  make  me  know  the  worldly 
squareness  and  the  battering  are  worth  while  beyond 
themselves:  but  a  detail  in  the  game. 
You  mightn't  guess  it  but  I  am  diffident  about 
broaching  this  much  that  may  sound  like  a  plea, 
so  ril  say  no  more  of  it. 

But  before  I  close  the  letter  I  want  to  tell  you  that 
I'm  not  wanting  in  gratitude  for  the  terrible  beauty 
of  this  world.  I  feel  with  ecstasy  the  burning  love- 
liness of  the  life  you  give  the  human  race. 
I  want  to  tell  you  thank-you  for  some  things  in  it. 
But  all  that  they  mean  I  can  not  tell  in  words. 
Only  yesterday  a  light  at  sundown  lingered  on  the 
hill-tops  and  on  the  desert  back  of  the  School  of 
Mines  in  tints  of  Olive  and  Copper  and  Ochre  and 
Rose  so  delicate,  so  radiant,  so  dumbly  forlorn  that 
I  closed  my  eyes  against  it  all  as  I  walked  along  the 
sand:  its  aliveness,  its  realness,  its  flawless  golden 
dreadful  peace  tortured  and  twisted  and  too-keenly 
interpreted  me. 

And  one  summer  day  in  Central  Park  in  New  York 
I  saw  a  little  Yellow- Yellow  Butterfly  fluttering 


ii8 


To  Gody  care  of  the  whistling  winds 


above  a  small  plot  of  brilliant  Green-Green  Grass  in 
the  afternoon  sunshine.    To  you,  God,  used  to  the 
purpling  splendor  of  untold  worlds  that   mightn't 
seem  noteworthy.     But  to  me — because  I  am  half- 
sister  to  so  many  trivialities  the  Yellow- Yellow  of 
those  little  wings  and  the  sweet  bright  Green  of  the 
clipped   velvet    Grass    beneath    the   sun   suddenly 
fiercely  entered  in  and  beat-beat  hard  on  my  imagi- 
nation.    O  the  glare  and  the  flare  of  that  fairy 
prettiness!    I  shall  never  forget  that  picture  though 
I  should  one  day  see  those  worlds.    It  made  me  think 
wildly  of  you,  God,  at  the  time — and  ever  since* 
It  is  there  yet  in  Central  Park,  that  particular  plot 
of  Grass,  and  if  not  that  Yellow- Yellow  Butterfly — 
happily,  happily  YeHow  it  was — then  another! 
And  to-day  and  often  other  days  I  read  this — 
'Heard  melodies  are  sweet,  but  those  unheard  are 
sweeter ' — 
— magic  words:  potent  hushed  wizardry  of  beauty. 
It  opens  the  doors  of  all  the  Inner  Rooms  and  more 
blest,  more  precious,  of  the  celestial  brain  of  him 
who  wrote  it.    In  making  the  glimmering  Purple  of 
all  your  worlds,  God,  you  have  not  surpassed  the 
thing  you  made  in  the  regal  wistful  glory  of  John 
Keats. 

And  two  nights  ago  I  went  close  to  my  glass  and 
looked  deep  into  my  own  dark  gray  eyes,  and  they 


To  God,  care  of  the  whistling  winds  1 19 

were  beautiful.    Their  color  is  the  gray  not  of  peace 
but  of  stormy  sky  and  clouded  sea.    Their  expression 
is  alien  and  melancholy  and  they  are  never  without 
circlings  of  fatigue  or  stress.    And  when  I  meet  their 
glance  they  mostly  accuse  and  condemn  and  con- 
found me.    But  two  nights  ago  they  grew  wide  and 
deep  and  breathless-looking  at  realizing  me  human 
and  alive.    And  presently  I  saw,  back  of  their  gray 
iris — my  Soul:    like  a  naked  girl:    like  a  willow  in 
the  wind:    like  a  drowning  star  at  daybreak:    an 
inherent  inexpressible  grace — my  Soul  of  many  ages. 
And   this    moment    another    little    memory,    God, 
of  a  tropic  marsh  a  little  way  back  from  the  sea  on 
the  island  in  the  bay  at  St.  Augustine,  as  it  looked 
in  the  wane  of  one  sun-flooded  February  day.     In 
the   marsh   were  tall   waving  feathery  salt-marsh 
grasses,  and  little  pools  of  murky  water.    And  there 
were  snail-shells  and  ancient  barnacles  and  smooth 
beach  pebbles.    And  bordering  the  pools  were  reeds 
and  flags  and  tiny  wax-petaled  death-white  lilies. 
By  a  mound  of  wet  moss  was  a  slim  wild  blue  heron 
standing  on  one  leg  and  staring  about  and  preening 
its  blue  feathers.     And  over  aH  the  scene  was  a 
Pink-Pink  Flush.     The  curving  quivering  tops  of 
the  long  grass  were  Pink  with  it.    The  pools  were 
dull  Pink  mirrors.     The  barnacles,  the  pebbles,  the 
death-white  lilies  were  as  if  a  thin  bloody  veil  had 


120  To  God,  care  oj  the  whistling  winds 

been  flung  down  on  them.  Pink  touched  the  heron's 
wings,  its  beak,  its  head,  its  glittering  beady  eyes 
and  spindly  leg.  The  sinking  sun  shot  a  Pink 
broadside  of  dream-dust  all  over  the  marsh:  it 
lingered  and  hung  and  floated.  Almost  I  could  have 
reached  out  my  two  hands  and  gathered  a  bouquet 
of  Pink  Flush.  The  stillness,  which  was  intense,  was 
Pink  stillness.  O  but  it  was  pleasant,  pleasant, 
pleasant,  God — it  wrapped  me  in  a  scarf  of  Pink 
sweetness:  it  filled  my  throat  with  Pink  honey: 
it  laid  on  me  a  gentle  eager  quiet  covetous  Pink 
spell. 

Nobody  knows  how  you  do  it,  God.  But  it  is  all — 
Sunset  Tint,  Yellow-Yellow  Moth,  Conscious  Soul, 
Poet- Flame — maddening  and  precious  and  terrifying 
and  transfiguring  to  me  who  live  among  it.  I  cherish 
it  as  a  lonely  one  may  who  loves  it  with  passion  and 
is  never  happy  in  it.    And  for  it  all  I  thank  you, 

God.  ^r  .  T 

Yours  very  sincerely, 
Mary  MacLane. 

I  wrote  the  Letter  on  my  long-unused  monogram 
note-paper  to  please  my  whim,  and  put  it  in  the 
envelope  and  addressed  it  to  God,  care  of  the 
Whistling  Winds.  He  may  receive  it — what  do  I 
know? — only  he  knows,  and  is  reticent. 
I  only  know  he'll  not  answer  it. 


A  working  diaphragm  121 


To-morrow 

1AM  not  Respectable  nor  Refined  nor  in  Good 
Taste. 
I   take  a  delicate  M.-Mac-Lane  pleasure  in 
those  facts. 

I  doubt  if  they  are  anyway  peculiar  to  me,  but  they 
feel  like  a  someway  delicious  clandestine  cir- 
cumstance: something  to  enjoy  all  to  myself. 
It  is  difficult  to  imagine  any  woman  really  Respec- 
table on  her  inner  side,  the  side  that  is  turned  toward 
herself  alone.  And  it's  certain  no  woman  is  Refined: 
it  feels  not  possible.  (There  are  yet  inland  places 
where  the  word  is  used  in  its  smug  sense  and  believed 
in.)  And  no  woman  but  a  dead  woman  in  her  coffin 
is  in  complete  Good  Taste.  Every  live  woman  has 
for  instance  a  working  diaphragm:  and  in  a  dia- 
phragm there  is,  in  the  final  analysis,  simply  no  taste 
at  all. 

(As  for  men — except  poets — I  mean  poets:  and 
perhaps  scientists — they  are  so  ungenuine:  a  race 
of  discreet  cautious  puppets:  wooden  dolls  who 
move  as  their  strings  are  pulled:  with  nothing  so 
real  about  them  inside  as  even  outside — what  use 
to  dwell  upon  them?) 

Nearly  all  women  are  perplexingly  interesting  as 
human  beings.    And  I  am  quite  the  most  interesting 


122  A  working  diaphragm 

human  being  I  know:  and  with  it  the  most  appealing, 
the  most  sincere — in  my  own  false  fashion,  and  the 
most  bespeaking. 

It  is  much  due  to  knowing  and  feeling  me  to  be 
not  Respectable  nor  Refined  nor  in  Good  Taste: 
I>articularly  to  being  not  in  Good  Taste. 
One  autumn  evening  in  Boston  I  went  to  dine  with  a 
man  in  his  apartment  in  Beacon  Street.  He  is  a 
mining  engineer  whom  I  have  known  since  we  were 
both  children.  He  had  bidden  me  to  dinner  in  his 
off-hand  engineering  way,  but  when  I  arrived  at 
his  diggings  he  was  not  there.  He  did  not  come. 
Instead  there  was  a  dinner  waiting,  a  Japanese  boy 
to  serve  it,  and  a  strange  man  who  had  happened 
in.  The  strange  man  had  iron-gray  hair,  a  brow 
like  Apollo,  a  jowl  Hke  Bill  Sikes  and  much  conver- 
sation. He  said  that  he  was  newly  from  China, 
South  Africa  and  Egypt  and  that  in  his  hfe  he  had 
been  married  seven  times  with  book  and  bell. 
Together  we  ate  the  dinner,  talking  pleasantly  in 
the  Hght  of  colored  Chinese  lamp-shades.  There 
were  little  birds  to  eat  and  Chinese  wine  to  drink — 
sam  shu  distilled  virilely  from  rice:  always  a  little 
of  it  is  too  much.  After  the  dinner  we  were  standing 
by  a  teakwood  sideboard  and  the  strange  man  was 
holding  me  tightly  in  his  arms  against  a  large  smooth 
evening  panel  of  shirt-front,  and  he  was  kissing  my 


A  working  diaphragm  123 

mouth  with  a  great  deal  of  ardor.  I  did  not  like  it. 
I  thought  of  all  the  women  he  had  married  and 
wondered  if  they  had  liked  it.  And  I  mused  in  my 
placid  brain,  *As  I  was  going  to  St.  Ives  I  met  a 
man  with  seven  wives. '  It  was  the  only  thought  in 
my  mind  as  I  waited  boredly  for  him  to  have  done. 
(It's  no  good  struggling.)  And  that  incident  I 
know  was  not  Respectable. 

And  one  summer  day  I  was  riding  horseback  up  a 
steep  gorge  in  these  Montana  hills.  It  was  hot  dusty 
riding.  I  came  to  a  mountain  stream  with  a  beauti- 
ful little  white-and-blue  cascade  tumbling  over  a 
high  rock  upon  smooth  pebbles  below.  I  got  down 
from  my  horse,  took  off  my  dusty  khaki  suit  and 
all  my  clothes  and  stood  under  the  fall  of  the  little 
tumbling  cascade,  whitely  naked,  without  so  much 
as  a  figleafs  covering.  It  was  delectable  and  pagan, 
what  with  my  quaint  thoughts  as  I  stood  crouched 
beneath  the  sparkling  splash.  And  I  know  there 
was  nothing  Refined  in  it. 

And  one  evening  between  nine  and  ten,  a  week  ago. 
I  was  walking  across  the  broad  desert  valley  east  of 
this  Butte.  It  is  late  November  and  the  night  was 
stormy.  A  strong  high  gale  swept  the  Flat.  Pres- 
ently it  rained.  I  was  on  my  way  back  with  a  mile 
or  two  to  go.  It  rained  harder.  Heavy  sheets  of 
black  water  whipped  and  whirled  down  on  me  and 


124  -^  working  diaphragm 

wrapped  me  in  their  wet  wings.  I  love  all  weather 
when  it  is  mild  and  more  when  it  is  rough  except 
when  it  bears  down  too  hard:  then  I  feel  indifferent 
to  it.  As  I  moved  along  the  dark  road  not  hurrying 
and  not  loitering  I  was  saying  inside  me,  *Why  am  I 
going  to  any  shelter  out  of  this  heavy  wet  rain? 
Why  am  I  not  a  houseless  beggar-woman  with 
nothing  gentler  in  all  my  life  than  this  November 
storm?  It  is  not  because  I  deserve  gentler  things — ' 
And  with  a  sudden  heavy  shudder  I  whispered, 
*I  wish  I  were  a  beggar-woman!  I  wish  I  had  no 
roof  to  cover  me  in  this  cold  night-blackness.  It 
would  be  honest:  I  should  be  stripped  to  my  deserts. 
And  I  wish  it  were  so — this  drenching  rain,  this 
strangling  wind — nothing  but  this — shelter,  money, 
comfort,  self-satisfaction,  however  seemingly  earned, 
are  dishonest — thieved.  I  ought  to  be — ragged 
beggar — bleared  eyes — dirty  petticoats — a  foul  ratty 
hole  to  creep  into — hunger — bodily  misery — all  the 
portion  of  outcasts —  As  God  may  hear  me — I'd 
eagerly  tremblingly  change  lives  this  moment  with 
a  beggar-woman.  I  would — I  would — !'  It  is  a 
piece  of  clear  inside  truth  about  myself.  And  I 
know  it  proves  me  to  be  in  poor  Taste. 
Ittis  a  matter  of  attitude.  Each  of  those  incidents 
might  happen  to  any  woman — except  perhaps  the 
last.     I  have  known  but  one  girl  who  agreed  with 


A  working  diaphragm  125 

me  in  such  a  feeling.  And  not  quite  that  feeling. 
She  had  married  a  lot  of  money  with  a  horrible  old 
gentleman  and  had  wearied  of  both.  But  the  other 
two  episodes  could  readily  belong  to  any  woman  of 
esprit  who  might  be  on  the  outside  both  Respectable 
and  Refined:  even  a  woman  lawyer. 
But  my  attitude  in  the  incident  of  the  strange  iron- 
gray  man,  though  in  a  bored  way  I  could  have 
viciously  knifed  him,  was  not  a  Respectable  attitude. 
I  was  bored  and  fanciful  when  doubtless  I  ought  to 
have  been  breathlessly  angry.  But  my  breathless 
anger  is  too  rare  and  beautiful  an  emotion  to  waste 
on  ridiculous  strange  iron-gray  men. 
In  the  incident  of  the  sparkling  cascade  my  attitude 
was  shameless:  something  of  the  sort.  It  is  never 
reprehensible  for  a  woman  to  take  a  cold  shower- 
bath  in  solitude  and  health.  But  my  spirit  rose  and 
rejoiced  at  my  bodily  nakedness  and  then  grew 
nymph-like  and  figleafless  on  its  own  account.  My 
sex  exploited  itself  in  mental  visions,  like  of  Leda 
and  the  Swan  or  of  myself  as  a  slim  villainous  Scotch 
Aphrodite  conceived  by  a  bold  surprising  Titian. 
And  doubtless  I  ought  to  have  felt  timorous  in  the 
vast  sunlit  mountainside,  or  like  a  sexless  child  (or 
merely  *  hygienic '  like  William  Muldoon  and  Bernarr 
McFadden).  But  the  quick  charm  of  the  situation 
and  the  heavenly  anguish  of  the  icy  water,  and  my 


126  A  working  diaphragm 

lovely  Body,  and  my  odd  moralless  musings  were 
too  intriguing  to  expend  themselves  banalely. 
The  wet  night  road  and  the  beggar-woman  wish: 
it  is  drearily  real  to  me.  Though  I  wear  two  plain 
dainty  dresses,  in  a  house — in  me,  beating,  beating, 
pounding  down  is  a  cold  wild  heavy  rain :  and  under 
my  feet  a  long  lonely  muddy  road.  If  they  belong 
to  me — well.  I  love  Me  the  more  for  feeling  them. 
And  I  feel  them  because  I  am  not  yet  dead  and  in  my 
coffin,  but  alive  and  with  a  working  diaphragm: 
which  diaphragms  are  in  not  Good  Taste. 


^ 


Lofs  wife  127 


To-morrow 

TO-DAY  in  the  afternoon  I  briskly  manicured 
my  fingernails,  sitting  by  my  gold-and-blue 
window,  and  I  mused  upon  Lot's  Wife. 
So  many  persons  and  incidents  and  events  and 
adventures  and  episodes  there  are  to  muse  upon, 
in  this  mixed  world,  dating  from  when  it  began  till 
now.  There's  something  to  charm  any  mood.  Let 
me  leave  the  doors  of  my  mind  open  and  anything 
at  all  may  float  in  like  an  errant  butterfly  on  a 
summer's  day. 

It  is  an  entertaining  world,  by  and  large:  a  limitless 
vaudeville. 

Lot's  Wife  is  to  me  a  fantasy  from  the  antique, 
a  bit  of  archaic  frivol  to  beguile  me. 
When  first  I  heard  of  her,  from  an  acrid  aunt  of  caus- 
tic humor  who  told  me  the  tale  tersely  in  explanation 
of  a  biblical  print,  I  was  seven  years  old.  From  that 
day  to  this  my  meditative  thoughts  have  from  time 
to  time  flitted  backward  to  dwell  interestedly  upon 
Lot's  Wife.  Later  when  I  went  to  an  Episcopal 
Sunday-school  I  was  pleased  to  find  this  adjuration 
in  according-to-St.-Luke:  'Remember  Lot's  Wife.* 
There  seemed  no  special  meaning  attached  to  it.  It 
seemed  like  Remember  Lot's  Wife  in  any  way  you 
like — as  it  might  be  with  a  card  on  her  birthday,  a 


128  ^  Lot's  wife 

useless  gift  at  Christmas,  in  your  prayers,  or  in 
retributive  patriotism  like  Remember  the  Alamo, 
Remember  the  Maine. 
But  I  remember  her  because  I  like  her. 
There's  no  name  given  for  Lot's  Wife  in  the  brief 
biblical  narrative,  so  I  long  ago  named  her  Bella 
as  expressive  of  the  temperament  and  character 
that  have  grown  around  her  image  in  my  thoughts. 
Poor  Bella,  I  ruminated  as  I  tinted  and  polished  my 
nails.  Her  life  in  Sodom  was  not  entirely  satisfying 
to  her.  Sodom  was  a  town  completely  given  over 
to  pleasure  of  the  physical  and  outward  sorts.  The 
dwellers  lived  in  and  for  their  physical  senses  alone. 
And  Bella  had  it  in  her  to  care  for  the  foods  of  the 
spirit.  Not  that  she  longed  for  them — she  was  not 
so  conscious  of  herself — but  she  had  it  in  her  to  care 
for  them  had  they  been  given  her.  Still,  Sodom  and 
its  ways  were  the  best  she  knew  and  she  had  known 
them  all  her  life.  The  roots  of  her  temperament  had 
shot  down  into  the  Sodomesque  substrata.  She 
fondly  loved  the  place. 

Sodom  was  a  prototype  for  Babylon  or  Pompeii, 
worshiping  the  hotness  of  the  sun  in  moralless  plai- 
sance,  with  fetes  and  drinkings  of  wine  from  gold 
and  silver  cups,  and  bathings  in  warm  scented 
marble-lined  pools,  and  anointings  with  oils  of  olive 
and  palm,   and  dwellings   among  flowers   of  thin 


Lot's  wife  129 

bright  petals  and  birds  of  vivid  plumage  and 
fountains  of  crystal  and  rainbow,  and  caterings  to  the 
sparkle  and  froth  of  human  emotions,  and  browsings 
amid  loves  and  lights  o'  love.  Can  Bella  be  won- 
dered at  for  growing  fond  of  it  all,  having  known 
nothing  substantialer?  And  can  she  rightly  be 
blamed  for  hating  the  thought  of  leaving  it  for  dry 
sage-brush  wilds  in  the  mountains?  She  did  hate 
and  dread  that  thought  with  all  her  soul  from  the 
moment  it  was  made  known  to  her  that  Sodom  for 
its  sins  was  booked  for  destruction.  She  had  perhaps 
a  fortnight  in  which  to  dread  it,  and  a  fortnight  if 
given  over  to  dread  is  long  enough  to  damage 
stronger  spirits  than  hers. 

Bella  was  slender  and  svelte,  with  long  straight  soft 
beautiful  silken  pale  red  hair  and  white-lidded  eyes 
of  grayish  green.  She  was  thirty-eight — a  young 
thirty-eight.  There's  an  old  thirty-eight  which 
applies  to  greedy  school-teachers,  gangrenous  woman 
government-clerks,  fading  hard-hearted  stenog- 
raphers, over-righteous  woman  doctors;  to  all 
whose  virtue  is  ever  indecently  on  guard.  But 
there's  a  glory-tinted  sun-kissed  young  thirty-eight 
which  applies  to  sensitive  high-strung  generously- 
emotional  women  like  Bella  Lot.  She  had  smooth 
hands  with  supple  tapering  fingers,  an  irregular 
expressive-lipped   mouth    like   a   pimpernel-bloom. 


130  Lofs  wife 

firm  slim  feet  and  the  quivering  suggestive  white 
knees  of  a  wood-nymph.  From  any  angle-of-view 
can  she  be  blamed  for  hating  to  take  that  equipment 
away  from  the  city-de-Iuxe  which  was  its  so  proper 
setting  and  hiding  it  in  the  sage-brush? 
Furthermore  Bella  had  a  lover  in  Sodom.  It  is 
beyond  a  sane  effort  of  the  imagination  that  she 
could  have  loved  that  unpleasing  old  man  Lot. 
The  best  and  worst  that  can  be  said  of  him  is  that  he 
was  a  fit  addition  to  the  company  of  the  old  Patri- 
archs who  were  for  the  most  part  an  exceeding  craven 
crew.  The  martyrs,  the  sages  and  especially  the 
prophets  had  their  splendors.  But  the  lean  old 
patriarchs — The  sporting  blood  of  all  of  them — in 
the  sense  of  merest  simplest  courage — from  Adam 
down,  would  hardly  aggregate  one  drop.  There  are 
any  number  of  reasons — as  many  as  Bella  had  charms 
— to  account  for  Lot's  having  married  her.  But 
what  she  could  have  seen  in  him  to  make  her  wish 
or  even  willing  to  be  married  to  him  is  a  deep  mystery 
to  me.  It  may  have  been  his  family.  I  believe 
Bella  lacked  family:  she  was  just  a  person.  And 
was  he  not  nephew  to  Abraham?  But  even  being 
niece-in-Iaw  to  Abraham  himself  seems  insufficient 
compensation  for  being  Lot's  Wife. 
The  Lots  had  two  young  daughters,  one  fifteen  and 
one  seventeen,  it  might  be.     I  do  not  know  their 


Lot's  wife  131 

names — call  them  Ethel  and  Agnes.  But  they  were 
of  a  recalcitrant  temper  and  absorbed  in  their  own 
racy  pastimes  among  the  younger  youth  of  Sodom 
and  they  had  no  need  of  their  mother.  Besides, 
they  *took  after'  their  father.  So  Bella  was  fain  to 
turn  outward  in  search  of  nurturing  matter  whereon 
to  feed  her  humanness.  Had  it  been  expected  of 
her  to  play  fair  with  the  patriarch  she  would  have 
played  fair.  But  it  was  not  expected  of  her  by  any- 
one in  Sodom — far  from  it,  and  least  of  all  by  the 
patriarch.  She  was  eight-and-thirty,  and  Lot — 
he  was  doubtless  eight  or  nine  hundred  years  old, 
after  the  surprising  long-lived  fashion  of  the  period. 
So  Bella  found  a  lover  ready  and  awaiting  her.  She 
would  have  found  a  lover  in  the  circumstances  even 
without  caring  to.  But  she  quite  cared  to,  I  think. 
Everything  points  that  way,  and  when  one  re- 
members that  good  old  man  her  husband  one  can 
not  censure  her  but  only  pity  her.  Be  it  as  it  may 
she  had  one — one  as  real  as  anything  could  be  in 
that  town  of  sparkling  froth. 

Of  the  lover's  identity — little  is  known,  as  the 
historians  say.  My  fancy  as  I  filed  my  fingernails 
failed  me  on  the  point.  Suffice  it  to  state  that  ever 
and  anon  as  time  passed  in  Sodom  the  gray-green 
eyes  of  Bella  were  gazed  into  with  fondness,  affection, 
adoration  and  desire:    the  white  eyelids  of  Bella 


132  Lot's  wife 

had  showers  of  light  kisses  bestowed  on  them,  soft- 
falling  as  rose-petals  shaken  loose  in  summer  winds: 
the  tapering  white  hands  of  Bella  were  caressed  and 
caressing  with  the  oddly  intense  tenderness  of 
physical  love:  the  pale  red  hair  of  Bella  was  ruffled 
and  fluffed  and  disarrayed  by  the  fingers  of  love: 
the  red-pimpernel  mouth  of  Bella  was  touched, 
bruised,  clung  to  by  the  lips  of  love:  the  svelte 
whiteness  and  nymph-knees  of  Bella  glowed  as  she 
broached  love's  arms: — and  all  went  much  merrier 
than  marriage  befls.  In  short,  Befla  paid  herself 
with  usury  for  the  deadliness  of  being  Lot's  Wife. 
And  there  we  have  the  crux  of  BeHa's  dread  of  leav- 
ing Sodom  and  its  tempered  sweetness  for  the  arid 
sage-brush  hiHs  and  the  respectively  cold  and  hectic 
companionship  of  the  good  old  patriarch  and  the  re- 
calcitrant daughters. 

It  can  not  be  claimed  for  Bella  that  any  white  poetic 
fires  gleamed  across  her  soul,  that  any  limning 
beauty  shone  palely  from  within  her.  The  air  of 
Sodom  was  not  conducive  to  suchlike  matters  and 
Bella  was  no  finer  than  her  breeding  and  generation. 
But  she  was  gentle  and  wistful  and  kind  of  heart. 
She  was  lovely  to  look  at  and  ingenuously  lovable 
in  her  clinging  affection  and  disarming  natural- 
ness. She  was  aH  one  could  want  to  imagine  in  the 
word  charming. 


Lofs  wife  133 

Came  the  night  set  for  destruction  and  the  Lot 
family  fled  according  to  schedule.  They  fled  away 
in  the  early  damps  of  an  autumn  evening  through 
the  outer  city  gates  and  along  a  rough  road  faintly 
lit  by  a  dying  moon.  They  had  three  separate 
reasons  for  fleeing.  Lot  fled  because  he  was  a  patri- 
arch and  was  given  to  doing  craven  Old-Testa- 
mentish  things  of  that  sort:  Bella  fled  because  she 
was  Lot's  Wife  and  obliged  to  act  out  the  r6Ie: 
and  Ethel  and  Agnes  fled  because  they  had  true 
patriarchal  blood  in  their  veins  and  had  therefore 
no  marked  inclination  to  remain  in  Sodom  to  be 
annihilated — 'safety  first'  was  one  of  their  watch- 
words. They  fled  in  the  van.  Lot  came  after  them, 
being  less  swift  of  foot.  Bella  lagged  behind.  She 
didn't  want  to  go.  Every  way  she  looked  at  it  she 
didn't  want  to  go.  She  hated  that  flight  for  a 
thousand  reasons. 

The  ghastly  moon  shed  a  terror  on  her  with  its  dim 
rays.  The  ground  was  hard  and  rutted  with  frosty 
mud  and  bruised  her  slender  feet  through  her 
white  buckskin  sandals. 

She  wore  a  loose  ninon  gown  of  white  silk  and  linen 
with  a  gold  girdle  around  her  narrow  loins  and  a 
gold  clasp  at  the  left  shoulder.  Binding  her  long 
hair,  so  palely  red  in  the  moon,  was  a  white-and-gold 
fillet.     In  one  hand  she  carried  a  gold-and-enamel 


134  Lofs  wife 

link  bracelet,  a  gift  but  that  afternoon  from  the 
lover.  Suddenly  she  stopped  and  cried  to  herself, 
*rm  too  lovely  for  this  fate — I'm  too  lovely  and 
beloved — the  cruelty  of  God — :  I'll  not  go  on!' 
She  thought  of  the  gleams  and  colorings  of  Sodom. 
She  quickly  reckoned  the  cost  and  decided  to  pay  it. 
She  was  a  rare  good  sport,  and  a  quaint.  She  looked 
back  at  the  doomed  city  blazing  in  brimstone — 
*But  his  wife  looked  back  from  behind  him,  and 
she  became  a  pillar  of  salt.' — 

As  I  put  away  my  chamois-skin  buffer  and  glass 
paste-jar  through  my  mind  floated  the  pensive 
burden  of  a  by-gone  French  song — 

^Oh,  the  poor,  oh,  the  poor,  oh,  the  poor — dear — 

girl'— 
She  must  have  made  a  beautiful  statue,  all  in  ghsten- 
ing  salt. 

I  wish  I  had  a  glistening  little  salty  repHca  of  it  to 
set  on  my  desk:  a  so  unusual,  a  so  dainty  conceit. 
Lot's  Wife! 


My  echoing  footsteps  135 


To-morrow 

WHILE  I  live  so  still  in  this  life-space, 
while  I  muse  and  meditate  and  analyze 
everything  I  touch,  while  I  walk, 
while  I  work,  while  I  change  from  one  plain  frock 
to  the  other:  in  quiet  hours  roiled  tumbling  storms 
of  vicarious  unhopeful  Passion  whirl,  whirl  in  me: 
Passion  of  Soul,  Passion  of  Mind,  Passion  of  living, 
Passion  of  this  mixed  world:  in  terror,  in  wild 
unease,  in  reasonless  mournful  joy. 
I  never  knew  real  Passion,  Passion-meanings,  till 
I  reached  thirty.  It  is  now  Fm  at  Iife*s  storm-center, 
youth's  climax,  the  high-pulsed  orgasmic  moment  of 
being  alive. 

At  twenty  the  woman's  chrysalis  soul  and  aching 
pulses  awaken  in  crude  chaste  Spring-cold  beauty. 
At  forty  her  fires  either  have  subsided  to  dim- 
glowing  coals  or  leaped  to  too-positive,  too-searing, 
too-obvious  flames — her  bones  and  the  filigrees  of 
her  spirit  may  be  alike  dry,  brittle-ish.  But  at 
thirty  her  Spring  has  but  changed  to  midsummer. 
Poesy  still  waits  upon  her  Passions. 
My  Spring  has  changed,  bloomed,  burst  to  mid- 
summer. 

Soft   electrical   heat-currents   of  being   swing   and 
sweep  around  me.     They  touch  me  and  enter  my 


136  My  echoing  footsteps 

veins.  But  the  liquid  essences  of  youth  still  quell 
and  compass  them.  I  am  at  youth's  climax — a  half- 
sullen,  half-smouldering  youth  which  still  is  youth. 
My  rose  of  life  is  fragrant  and  aglow.  Its  sweet 
pink  petals  are  uncurled  and  conscious  in  the  waver- 
ing light. 

Winds  flutter  and  stir  and  rumple  and  twist  those 
petals — 

To-day  is  a  To-morrow  of  countless  unrests.  Large 
and  little  Passions  beat  at  me  all  the  blue-and-copper 
day.  I  walked  my  floor  with  irregular  lagging  steps. 
I  felt  menacing,  dangerous  to  myself,  dynamic  as 
nitro-glycerine:  and  smoothly  drearily  sane  as  a 
bar  of  white  soap.  I  stood  at  my  window  and  looked 
long  at  the  circling  range  of  mountains  which  skirt 
this  Butte.  Nothing  else  I  have  looked  at,  of  sea  or 
plain  or  hill,  aff"ected  me  like  that  chain  of  barren 
peaks.  They  are  arid  splendor  and  pale  purple 
witchery  and  grief  and  lasting  sadness  and  deathlike 
beauty  and  woe  and  wonder.  Their  color  quietly 
stormed  my  eyes  and  blurred  them  with  tears. 
It  was  a  mood  in  which  any  color  or  gleam  or  thought 
or  strain  of  music  or  note  of  sad  world-laughter  or 
any  un-sane  loveHness  of  poetry  could  enchant  or 
flay  or  transport  me  to  my  frayed  last  nerve. 
There  is  terror  in  facing  death  on  battlefields,  on 
sinking  ships,  in  black  ice-floes,  in  blazing  buildings. 


My  echoing  footsteps  137 

But  to  me  no  death,  for  I  fear  no  death,  could  be 
so  dreadfully  pregnant  with  in-turning  woe  and 
frenzy  and  all  intolerable  feeling  as  facing  starkly 
my  futile  life. 

My  life  is  a  vast  stone  bastile  of  many  little  Rooms 
in  which  I  am  a  prisoner.  I  am  locked  there  in 
solitude  on  bread  and  water  and  let  to  roam  in  it  at 
will.  And  each  Room  is  tenanted  by  invisible 
garbled  furies  and  dubious  ecstasies.  I  run  with 
echoing  footsteps  from  Room  to  Room  to  escape 
them:  but  each  Room  is  more  unhabitable  than 
the  last.  There  are  scores  of  little  Rooms,  each  with 
its  ghosts,  each  different. 

In  one  Room  silent  voices  in  the  air  accuse  my  tired 
Spirit  of  wanton  vacillations  and  barren  lack  of 
purpose  and  utter  waste,  waste,  waste  of  itself. 
And  they  threaten  death  and  destruction.  I  know 
that  accusation  and  I  hate  it:  I  hate  it  the  more  for 
that  it's  wholly  just.  To  escape  it  I  run  from  that 
Room  along  a  dim  passage  into  another  one.  In  it 
unseen  fingers  clutch  my  Heart.  In  their  touch  also 
is  an  accusation:  of  selfishness  and  waste  and  want 
of  something  to  beat  for:  and  in  their  touch  is  the 
savor  of  wild  wishes  and  human  longings  and  pas- 
sionate prayers  for  something  warm  and  simple  and 
real  to  rest  against:  and  in  their  pressing  clutching 
turbulent    touch    is    a    tormenting    half-promise, 


138  My  echoing  footsteps 

chance-promise,  no-promise:  and  the  hovering 
inevitable  threat  of  death  and  destruction.  That 
too  I  know  and  hate  and  half-Iove :  and  I  can't  bear 
it.  So  I  run  out  of  that  Room  along  a  passage  and 
into  another.  I  hear  my  footsteps  echoing  as  I  run. 
— as  a  child  when  I  ran  in  the  early  night  through 
a  dark  leaf-lined  tunnel-Iike  driveway  the  sound  of 
my  own  flying  footsteps  on  the  hardened  gravel  was 
the  only  thing  that  frightened  me.  I  quite  believed 
there  were  bears  in  the  brushwood  on  either  side, 
but  fear  of  them  never  struck  to  the  core  of  my  child- 
being  like  the  unknown  thing  in  my  echoing  steps. 
And  it  is  fear  I  feel  now  from  the  ghost-sound  of  my 
ghost-footsteps  running,  running  away  from  the 
little  Rooms.  It  is  realer  to  me  now  than  were  my 
child  footsteps  to  my  child-self  long  ago :  it  is  more 
definite  than  my  hand  which  writes  this:  it  is 
hideous — 

Out  of  a  dim  passage  I  run  into  another  httle  Room. 
In  it  some  gray  filmy  threads,  hke  strands  of  loose 
cobwebs  caught  on  ceilings,  float  about.  They  sweep 
gently  against  my  cheeks  and  hands  and  neck,  and 
cling  and  twine  and  lightly  hold  with  the  half-felt 
feeling  peculiar  to  bits  of  cobwebs  on  the  skin. 
And  it  torments  my  woman-flesh  with  calefaciant 
thrills  fierce  and  goading  and  sweet.  There  also  is 
the  accusation,  now  against  my  Body;  for  tissues 


My  echoing  footsteps  139 

and  strength  wasted:  for  useless  fires  meant  to  warm 
human  seeds  to  life,  meant  to  make  me  fruitful, 
meant  to  make   me  bear  dear   race-burdens:   accu- 
sation for  the  cosmic  waste  of  hot  objectless  desire, 
for  the  subtle  guilt  of  a  Lesbian  tendency,  for  an 
unleashed  over-positive  sex-fancy.  With  it  too  is  the 
lowering  promise  of  death  and  destruction.    It  also 
is  just.    But  out  of  my  borne-along  helplessness  in 
it  comes  no  culpable  emotion  because  of  cobweb 
thrills  and  their  arraignment  but  only  a  wearing 
wearying   despair.      I   rush  out   of  that   Room   in 
shrugging  impatience,  with  only  scorn  for  a  threat  of 
death,  for  a  threat  of  destruction — but  with  a  wild 
fear  of  my  own  flying  steps.     I  hurry  and  hurry  on 
from  door  to  door:  but  it's  no  good.    In  some  other 
Room  my  brain  is  anathematized  from  frowning 
walls  as  an  impish  demoniac  power  which  I  use  with 
no  good  intent  and  therefore  with  bad  intent:   and 
again  I  shrink  and  run  away.    In  another  Room  are 
all  the  lies  I  have  ever  told:    I  have  told  legions — 
my  own  pecuhar  lies,  gentler  on  me  than  truths: 
they  dart  around  me  in  the  Room  like  black  heavy- 
winged  moths,  clouds  of  them  fluttering  at  my  fore- 
head.    They  drive  me  out  shivering.     In  another 
Room  four  times  when  I  was  a  not-good-sport  con- 
front me  in  a  row  Hke  pictures  and  sting  me  and  make 
me  hide  my  eyes:    I'd  rather  be  a  leper,  a  beast, 


140  My  echoing  footsteps 

a  maniac  than  a  not-good-sport  (for  my  own  precious 
reasons) — and  I  rush  away  again.  In  some  other 
Room — 

— the  same  galling  torment  in  all  the  Rooms. 
Wherever  I  run  with  the  echo-echo  of  steps  there 
are  Accusing  voices  and  half-formed  Prayer  and 
uncertain  Yearning  and  violent  yet  dumb  and  in- 
expectant  Protest  and  the  unfailing  Threat  of  death 
and  destruction:  not  earth-death  but  universe- 
death:  death  and  death  and  death  everywhere 
coming  on  and  on:  myself  knowing  the  just  note  in 
it  all  and  from  it  grown  numb  with  some  cold  and 
restless  terror.  Also  I  know  no  door  I  run  through 
with  my  panic-feet  will  ever  set  me  free  of  the 
bastile  except  a  death  door:  the  earthly  death  of 
this  tired  Hfe — 

But  it's  from  this  maelstrom  that  the  flashing  burn- 
ing sparkling  mad  magic  of  being  alive  leaps  out 
brilHant  and  barbarous — and  throbbing  and  splendid 
and  sweet.  A  merely  human  hunger  comes  back  on 
me.  Then  I  want  all  I  ever  wanted  with  a  hundred- 
fold more  voltage  of  wanting  than  I  have  ever  yet 
known, 

I  am  all  unhopeful,  all  unpeaceful,  all  a  desperate 
Languor  and  a  tragic  Futileness:   I  am  an  unspeak- 
ably untoward  thing. 
And  already  I  have  been  seared  and  scarred  trivially 


My  echoing  footsteps  141 

from  standing  foolishly  near  some  foolish  human 

melting-pots. 

No  matter  for  any  of  it.    I  want  to  plunge  headlong 

into  life — not  imitation  life  which  is  all   IVe  yet 

known,  but  honest  worldly  life  at  its  biggest  and 

humanest    and    cruelest    and    damnedest:     to    be 

blistered  and  scorched  by  it  if  it  be  so  ordered — 

so  that  only  it's  realness — from  the  outside  of  my 

skin  to  the  deeps  of  my  spirit. 

It  is  not  happiness  I  want — nothing  like  it:  its  like 

never  existed  since  this  world  began. 

I  want  to  feel  one  big  hot  red  bloody  Kiss-of-Life 

placed  square  and  strong  on  my  mouth  and  shot 

straight  into  me  to  the  back  wall  of  my  Heart. 

I  write  this  book  for  my  own  reading. 

It  is  my  postulate  to  myself. 

As  I  read  it  it  makes  me  clench  my  teeth  savagely: 

and  coldly  tranquilly  close  my  eyelids:  it  makes  me 

love  and  loathe  Me,  Soul  and  bones. 

Clench  and  close  as  I  will  the  winds  flutter  and  stir 

and  crumple  and  twist  my  petals  as  they  will: — as 

I  sit  here  tiredly,  tiredly  sane. 


142  A  comfortably  vicious  person 


To-morrow 

THE  blue-and-copper  of  yesterday  is  dead 
and  buried  this  To-morrow  in  a  maroon 
twilight. 
I  this  moment  saw  darkly  from  my  window  the 
somber  hills  in  their  heavy  spell  of  pale-purple  and 
grief  and  splendor  and  sadness  and  beauty  and 
wonder  and  woe. 

But  their  color  brings  no  tears  to  my  wicked  gray 
eyes. 

The  passion-edged  mood  is  burnt  out. 
Gone,  gone,  gone. 

I  listessly  change  into  the  other  black  dress  for  listless 
dinnertime  and  all  my  thought  is  that  my  abdomen 
is  beautifully  flat  and  that  I  must  purchase  a  new 
petticoat. 

I  rub  a  little  rouge  on  my  pale  mouth  and  I  idlingly 
recall  a  clever  and  filthy  story  I  once  heard. 
I  laugh  languidly  at  it  and  feel  myself  a  comfortably 
vicious  person. 

I  pronounce  a  damn  on  the  familiar  ache  in  my 
beloved  left  foot  and  turn  away  from  myself. 
I  stick  out  the  tip  of  my  forked-feeling  tongue  at 
the  bastard  clock  on  the  stairs.  I  note  the  hour  on 
it  with  a  fainness  in  my  spirit-gizzard  to  dedicate 
Me  from  that  time  forth  to  a  big  blue  god  of  Nasti- 


A  comfortably  vicious  person  143 

ness:  Nastiness  so  restful,  humorous,  appetizing, 
reckless,  sure-of-itself. 

— these  heUish  To-morrows  creeping  in  their  petty 
pace:  they  bring  in  weak-kneed  niceness,  and  they 
bring  in  doubts,  and  they  bring  in  meditation  and 
imagery  and  all-around  humanness,  till  I'm  a 
mere  heavy-heeled  dubious  complicated  jade. 


144  -^^  ^y  black  dress  and  my  still  room        |j 


To-morrow 

1HAVE  fits  of  Laughter  all  to  myself. 
The  world  is  full  of  funny  things.  All  to  my- 
self I  Laugh  at  them.  I  lounge  al  my  desk  in 
the  small  night  hours,  and  I  finger  a  pencil  or  a  box 
or  a  rubber  or  a  knife  and  rest  my  chin  on  my  hand, 
and  sit  on  my  right  foot,  and  Laugh  intermittently 
at  this  or  that. 

Ha!    ha!    ha!    I  say  inwardly:  with  all  my  Heart: 
relishingly. 

I  laugh  at  the  thought  of  a  mouse  I  once  encountered 
lying  dead — so  neat,  so  virtuous — though  soft  and 
o'er-Iong  dead — with  its  tail  folded  around  it — in  a 
porcelain  tea-pot:  a  strong  inimical  anomaly  to  all 
who  viewed  it.  It  had  a  look  of  a  saint  in  effigy  in 
a  whited  sepulcher.  Looked  at  as  a  mouse  it  seemed 
out  of  place.  Looked  at  as  a  saint  it  was  perfect. 
I  Laugh  at  the  recollection  of  a  lady  I  once  met  who 
had  thick  black  furry  eyebrows  incongruous  to  her 
face,  which  she  took  off"  at  night  and  laid  on  her 
bureau.  They  were  at  once  *  detached*  and  de- 
tachable: itself  a  subtle  phenomenon.  She  referred 
to  her  mind  as  her  *  intellects'  and  talked  with  a 
quaint  bogus  learnedness,  and  in  remarkable  gram- 
mar, of  the  Swedenborgian  doctrines.  Looked  at 
as  a  person  she  was  inadequate.     Looked  at  as  a 


In  my  black  dress  and  my  still  room  145 

conundrum  she  was  gifted  and  profound. 

I  Laugh  at  that  extraordinary  tailor  in  the  Mother 

Goose  rhyme — him  *  whose  name  was  Stout,'  who 

cut  off  the  petticoats  of  the  little  old  woman  'round 

about, '  herself  having  recklessly  fallen  asleep  on  the 

public  highway.    The  tale  leaves  me  the  impression 

that  such  were  the  straitly  economic  ideas  of  the 

tailor  that  he  obtained  all  his  cloth  by  wandering 

about   with    his    shears    until    he    happened    upon 

persons   slumbering  thus  publicly  and  vulnerably. 

Looked  at  in  any  light  that  tailor  is  ever  surprising, 

ever  original,  ever  rarely  delectable. 

I  Laugh  at  William  Jennings  Bryan. 

How   William   Jennings    Bryan    may   look   to   the 

country    and   world-at-Iarge    I    have    never    much 

considered. 

It  is  all  in  the  angle  of  view:  St.  Simeon  Stilites  may 

seem  rousingly  funny  to  some:  Old  King  Cole  may 

have  been  a  frosty  dullard  to  those  who  knew  him  best. 

To  me  William  Jennings  Bryan  means  bits  of  my 

relishingest  brand  of  gay  mournful  Laughter. 

The  ensemble  and  detail  of  William  Jennings  Bryan 

and  his  career  as  a  public  man,  viewed  impersonally 

— as  one  looks  at  the  moon — is  something  hectic  as 

hell's-bells. 

I  remember  William  Jennings  Bryan  when  his  star 

first  rose.     It  was  before  Theodore  Roosevelt  was 


146  In  my  black  dress  and  my  still  room 

more  than  a  name:  before  the  battleship  Maine  was 
sunk  at  Havana:  before  Lanky  Bob  wrested  the 
heavyweight  title  from  Gentleman  Jim  at  Carson: 
before  aeroplanes  were  and  automobiles  were  more 
than  rare  thin- wheeled  restless  buggies:  before  the 
song  'My  Gal  She's  a  High-born  Lady'  had  yet 
waned:  before  one  Carrie  Nation  had  hewn  her  way 
to  fame  with  a  hatchet.  I  was  a  short-skirted  little 
girl  devouringly  reading  and  observing  everything, 
and  I  took  note  of  all  those.  So  I  took  note  of 
William  Jennings  Bryan  nominated  for  president 
by  the  Democratic  convention  in  eighteen-ninety-six. 
The  zealous  Democratic  newspapers  referred  to  him, 
though  he  was  then  thirty-six,  as  the  Boy  Orator  of 
the  Platte.  Looked  at  as  a  grown  man,  advocating 
free  coinage  of  silver  at  sixteen-to-one — a  daring 
dashing  Democrat,  he  was  a  plausible  thing  and  even 
romantic.  Looked  at  as  a  Boy  Orator  he  turned  at 
once  into  a  bald  ai  d  aged  lad  oddly  flavored  with 
an  essence  of  Dare-devil  Dick,  of  the  boy  on  the 
burning  deck,  of  a  kind  of  political  Fauntleroy  madly 
matured. 

Long  years  later  with  the  top  of  his  hair  and  his 
waistline  buried  deep  in  his  past  he  became  Secretary 
of  State:  and  at  the  same  time  a  Chautauqua 
Circuit  lecturer — entertaining  placid  satisfied 
audiences  alternately  with  a  troupe  of  Swiss  Yodlers. 


In  my  black  dress  and  my  still  room  147 

Of  all  things,  yodlers.  Politics  makes  strange  bed- 
fellows and  always  did.  But  never  before  has  the 
American  Department  of  State  combined  and  vied 
with  the  yodler's  art  to  entertain  and  instruct. 
Looked  at  as  a  monologist  he  might  pass  if  suf- 
ficiently interpolated  with  ah-Ie-ee!  and  ah-Ie-0-0! 
Looked  at  as  Secretary  of  State  he  is  grilling  and 
gruelling  to  the  senses:  a  frightful  figure  quite  sur- 
passing a  mouse  softly  dead  in  a  tea-pot,  a  pair  of 
detachable  fuzzy  Swedenborg-addicted  eyebrows, 
a  presumptuously  economical  tailor. 
And  he  entertained  the  foreign  ministers  at  a  state 
dinner,  did  this  unusual  man,  and  he  gave  them  to 
drink — what  but  grape-juice,  grape-juice  in  its 
virginity.  Plain  water  might  have  seemed  the 
crystalline  expression  of  a  rigid  puritanic  spirit. 
Budweiser  Beer,  bitter  and  bourgeois,  might  have 
been  possible  though  surprising.  But  grape-juice, 
served  to  seasoned  Latin  Titles  and  Graybeards  and 
Gold-Braid,  long  tamely  familiar  with  the  Widow 
Clicquot:  that  in  truth  seems,  after  all  the  years, 
boyishly  oratorical,  wildly  and  darkly  Nebraskan. 
Looked  at  as  an  appetizing  wash  for  a  children's 
white-collared  and  pink-sashed  party,  or  for  any- 
body on  a  summer  afternoon,  grape- juice  is  satis- 
factory. In  the  careless  hands  of  William  Jennings 
Bryan  with  his  soul  so  unscrupulously  at  peace, 


148  In  my  black  dress  and  my  still  room 

the   virgin   grape- juice   becomes   a   vitriolic   thing: 

a  defluent  purple  river  crushing  one's  helpless  spirit 

among  its  rocks  and  rapids. 

— a   terrible   American,    William   Jennings    Bryan. 

He  is  for  *  peace  at  any  price.'     There  were  some, 

long  and  long  ago,  who  suffered  and  endured  one 

starveling   winter   in   camp   at   Valley    Forge   that 

William  Jennings  Bryan  might  wax  Nebraskanly  fat: 

and  he  is  valiantly  for  peace:  at  any  price — 

For  that  my  Laughter  is  tinged  with  fulfilling  hatred. 

Rich  hot-Iivered  Laughter  must  have  in  it  essential 

love  or  hatred. 

To  William  Jennings  Bryan  everything  he  has  done 

in  his  political  career  must  seem  all  right. 

It  is  all  right,  undoubtedly.    Just  that. 

— that  Silver-tongued  Boy  Orator 

those  Yodlers 

that  Peerless  Leader 

that  Grape- juice — 

They  come  breaking  into  my  melancholy  night-hours 

with  an  odd  high-seasoned  abruptness. 

I  wonder  what  God  thinks  of  him. 

It  might  be  God  thinks  well  of  him. 

But  I — in  my  black  dress  and  my  still  room — I  say 

inwardly  and  willy-nilly,  and  with  all  my  Heart 

and  relishingly: 

Ha!  ha!  ha! 


Their  little  shoes  149 


To-morrow 

OFTEN  in  windy  autumn  nights  I  lie  awake 
in  my  shadowy  bed  and  think  of  the 
children,  the  Drab-eyed  thousands  of 
children  in  this  America  who  work  in  coal  mines 
and  factories. 

Whenever  Tm  wakeful  and  the  night  is  windy  and 
my  room  is  dark  and  I  lie  in  aloneness — a  long  alone- 
ness:  centuries — then  shadows  come  from  far-off 
world-wildnesses  and  float  and  flutter  dimly  un- 
happy around  my  bed.  They  tell  me  tales  of  shame 
and  tame  petty  hopelessness  and  trifling  despair. 
And  the  one  that  comes  oftenest  is  the  one  that  tells 
of  those  Drab- Eyed  children  distances  from  here, 
but  very  immediate,  who  work  in  coal  mines  and 
factories.  I  read  about  them  in  magazines  and 
newspapers,  but  they  aren't  then  one  one-hundredth 
so  real  as  when  their  shadow  floats  as  close  to  me  in 
the  windy  autumn  night. 

Once  in  Pennsylvania  I  saw  a  group  of  children, 
very  Drab  in  the  Eyes  and  very  thin  in  the  necks 
and  legs,  who  worked  in  a  mill.  Their  look  made  its 
imprint  in  my  memory  and  more  in  my  flesh.  And 
it  comes  back  as  if  it  were  the  only  thing  that  mat- 
tered as  I  lie  wakeful  in  the  windy  night. 
The  children — unconscious  and  smiling  their  small 


150  Their  little  shoes 

decayed  smiles — they  are  living  and  being  crushed 
between  greed  and  need  as  between  two  murderous 
millstones.  Their  frail  flesh  and  their  little  brittle 
bones,  their  voices  and  their  pinched  insides,  the  sweet 
vague  childish  looks  which  belong  in  their  faces  are 
squeezed  and  crunched  by  two  millstones — squeezed, 
squeezed  till  their  scrawny  fledgeling  bodies  are  dry, 
breathless,  and  are  gasping,  strangling,  striving 
frightfully  for  life:  and  still  are  slowly,  all  too  slowly, 
dying  between  two  millstones. 

If  it  were  their  own  greed  or  their  own  need — but  it's 
the  greed  of  fat  people  and  the  need  of  their  own 
warped  gaunt  parents.  Betwixt  the  two  the  children 
meet  homelike  hideous  ruin.  Placidly  they  are 
cheated  and  blighted  and  blasted,  placidly  and  with 
the  utmost  domesticness. 

The  most  darkling-luminous  thing  about  the  Drab- 
Eyed  children  is  that  they  never  weep.  They  talk 
among  themselves  and  smile  their  little  dreadful 
decayed  smiles,  but  they  don't  weep.  When  they 
walk  it's  with  a  middle-aged  gait:  when  they  eat 
their  noontime  food  it's  as  grown  people  do,  with 
half-conscious  economic  and  gastronomic  consider- 
ation. They  count  their  Tuesdays  and  Wednesdays 
with  calculation  as  work-days,  which  should  be 
childishly  wind-sweptly  free.  Which  is  all  of  less 
weight  than  the  heavy  fact  that  they  never  weep. 


Their  little  shoes  151 

They  reckon  themselves  fairly  fortunate  with  their 
bits  of  silver  in  yellow  envelopes  every  Saturday. 
They  are  permitted  to  keep  a  bit  of  it,  each  child  a 
bit  for  herself  or  himself,  so  that  on  Sunday  after- 
noons they  lose  themselves  for  precious  hours  watch- 
ing Charlie  Chaplin.  Many  pink-faced  inconsequent 
children  whose  parents  nurture  them  and  guard 
them  and  eternally  misunderstand  them  are  less 
worldHIy  lucky.  But  the  pink-faced  children  often 
weep — loudly,  foolishly  like  puppies  and  snarhng 
furry  cubs — and  wet  sweet  salt  tears  of  proper 
childishness  are  round  and  bright  on  their  cheeks 
and  lashes.  It's  a  sun- washed  blestness  for  them: 
they're  impelled  and  allowed  to  weep.  But  the 
Drab  Eyes  shed  no  tears — they  know  no  reason  why 
they  should.  There's  no  impulse  for  soft  liquid 
grief  in  the  murderous  philosophy  of  two  grinding 
millstones.  And  there's  no  time — the  lives  of  the 
work-children  move  on  fast.  Their  very  shoes  are 
ground  between  the  millstones. 

— their  little  shoes  are  heartbreaking.  The  mill- 
stones grind  many  things  along  with  little-Iittle 
shoes  of  children;  germs  of  potent  splendid  human- 
ness  that  might  grow  bigly  American  in  heroic  ways 
or  in  sane  round  honesty:  germs  that  might  grow 
into  brave  barbaric  beauty  or  warm  wistful  sweet- 
ness:   germs  that  would  grow  into  lips  blooming 


152  Their  little  shoes 

tender  and  fragrant  as  jonquils  or  into  minds  swim- 
ming with  lyrics: — what  is  strongly  lasting  and 
glorified  in  the  forlorn  divine  human  thing — 
crumpled — twisted  forever  when  millstones  grind 
children's  little  poor  shoes — 

The  young  Drab  Eyes  are  endlessly  betrayed:  their 
very  color  thieved.  There's  no  reason  why  they 
should  weep. 

But  there's  a  far-blown  sound  as  if  ten  thousand  bad 
and  good  worldly  eyes  were  weeping  in  their  stead: 
with  a  note  in  it  careless,  compassionate  and  jadedly 
menacing. 

I  seem  to  hear  it  in  the  wakeful  windy  night.  And 
I  hear  no  world-music  pouring  out  of  small  throats 
of  work-children  shrill  with  woe-and-joy.  The 
sound  they  make  is  a  dumb  sound,  for  they  never 
weep:  a  ghost- wail  of  partly-dead  children  borne 
lowly  across  this  mixed  world  on  a  stale  hellish 
breeze. 


1 


The  sleep  oj  the  dead  153 


W 


To-morrow 

HEN  Fm  dead  I  want  to  Rest  awhile 
in  my  grave:  for  Fm  Tired,  Tired 
always. 

My  Soul  must  go  on  as  it  has  gone  on  up  to  now. 
It  has  a  long  way  to  go,  and  it  has  come  a  long  way. 
My  Soul  first  started  on  its  journey  somewhere  in 
Asia  before  the  dawn  of  this  civilization.  And  it  has 
gone  on  since  through  the  centuries  and  through 
strange  phases  of  Body,  terrors  of  flesh  and  blood, 
suff^ering  long.  But  it  has  gone  someway  on,  each 
space  of  the  journey  taking  it  nearer  to  the  journey 's- 
End. 

It  is  the  dim-felt  memory  of  those  journeys  that 
heaps  the  Tiredness  on  me  now.  Not  only  is  my 
spirit  Tired.  Through  my  spirit  my  hands  are 
Tired:  my  knees  are  Tired:  my  drooping  shoulders: 
my  thin  feet:  my  sensitive  backbone.  When  I  lift 
my  hand  in  the  sunshine  the  weight  of  the  yellow 
honeyed  air  bears  down  and  down  on  it  because 
Fm  so  Tired.  When  I  start  to  walk  on  stone  pave- 
ments the  ache  of  them  is  in  my  feet  before  I  set 
a  foot  on  them  because  Fm  so  Tired.  The  pulse  in 
my  veins  Tires  my  blood  as  it  beats.  My  low  voice, 
though  I  speak  but  rarely — it  Tires  my  throat.  My 
breath  Tires  my  chest.     The  weight  of  my  hair 


154  The  sleep  of  the  dead 

Tires  my  forehead  and  temples.  My  plain  frocks 
Tire  my  Body  to  wear.  My  swift  trenchant  thoughts 
Tire  my  Mind. 

It  is  not  the  Tiredness  of  efiPort  though  I  strive  to 
the  limits  of  my  strength  every  day. 
It  is  not  pain,  Restful  pain.    It  is  Tired  Tiredness. 
So  when  Tm  dead  I  want  to  Rest  awhile  in  my  grave. 
It  would  Rest  me. 

In  the  Episcopal  Church  they  use  a  ritual  of  poetic 
beauty,  full  of  Restful  things.  One  of  them  is  the 
sleep  of  the  dead.  The  crucified  Nazarene  slept  three 
days.  But  all  others  of  us  when  we  go  down  into  our 
graves  are  to  sleep  until  a  Judgment  Day.  'Judg- 
ment Day'  is  preposterous  and  evilly  crude:  there's 
no  judgment  till  each  can  judge  himself  simply  and 
cruelly  in  the  morning  light.  But  the  sleep  of  the 
dead — 

— the  sleep  of  the  dead.    Its  sound  by  itself  without 
the  thought  is  Restful — 
And  the  thought  is  Restful. 

I  imagine  me  wrapped  in  a  shroud  of  soft  thin  wool 
cloth  of  a  pale  color,  laid  in  a  plain  wood  coffin:  and 
my  eyelids  are  closed,  and  my  Tired  feet  are  dead 
feet,  and  my  hands  are  folded  on  my  breast.  And 
the  coffin  is  nine  feet  down  in  the  ground  and  the 
earth  covers  it.  Upon  that  some  green  sod:  and 
above,  the  ancient  blue  deep  sheltering  sky:    and 


The  sleep  of  the  dead  155 

the  clouds  and  the  winds  and  the  suns  and  moons, 

and  the  days  and  nights  and  circling  horizons — those 

above  my  grave. 

And  my  Body  laid  at  its  length,  eyes  closed,  hands 

folded,  down  there  Resting:   my  Soul  not  yet  gone 

but  laid  beside  my  Body  in  the  coffin  Resting. 

— might   we   lie   like   that — Resting,    Resting,    for 

weeks,  months,  ages — 

Year  after  long  year,  Resting. 


156  Stickily  mad 


To-morrow 

IT  is  damn-the-Smell-of-Turpentine! 
Here  I  happen  on  a  damn  in  me  which  is  not 
desultory  but  bloodily  strong  and  alive  and 
alone. 

The  wood  in  my  blue-white  room  has  been  newly 
painted.  For  a  day  and  a  night  I  intermittently 
encounter  and  go  to  bed  in  a  spirit  of  Turpentine. 
It  bears  a  cruel  obscure  abortive  message  to  my 
nerves. 

I  lie  wakeful  in  the  dark  and  try  to  reason  out  a 
logicalness  or  poetry  in  a  thing  so  artfully  pestilential. 
But  I  am  hysterically  lost  in  it  and  my  heart  beats 
hysterically  in  it. 

I  remember  the  inexpressible  ingenuity  of  man: 
of  white  man  as  against  bone-brained  savage  races. 
Every  invented  usefulness  feels  like  divine  witch- 
craft. A  pen  and  a  bottle  of  perfume  and  a  door- 
knob and  a  granite  kettle  and  an  electric  light: 
I  have  the  use  of  each  since  white  man  is  so  ingenious. 
Were  I  a  red  Indian  I  should  have  only  the  awkward 
barbarous  stupid  tools  my  race  had  used  a  thousand 
years.  I  contrast  the  two  as  I  lie  wakeful,  with  a 
sense  of  richness  and  of  detailed  repletion  and  of 
material  blestness. 
But  at  once  comes  the  Smell  of  Turpentine  and 


Stickily  mad  157 

announces  itself  something  outside  that  and  differ- 

entj    something    stronger,     something    masterfuler 

than  ingenuity  and  savagery  together.      It  tortures 

my  nerves:   it  burns  my  eyes:   it  lames  my  flesh: 

it   jerks   and    flays    and   garbles    my    inner   body. 

The   ingenuity  of  man   has   produced   opium   and 

cocaine  which  would  combat  and  hide  it  all  behind 

a   heavy   curtain   of  stupor,    with   effects   equally 

damaging  if  less  grievously  subtle. 

The  Smell  of  Turpentine  is  a  thing  to  bear  since  all 

its  counter-things  bring  only  solider  evil. 

The  paint  was  put  on  the  wood  by  a  dirty  little  man 

whom    I   briefly   inspected   as   something   removed 

from  my  range  of  life.     In  return  he  covertly  eyed 

me.    I  expected  my  wakeful  hours  would  be  punished 

by  strong  new  paint  and  be-visioned  by  dirty  little 

men.    But  it  is  afl  sheer  Turpentine  with  a  power 

suggesting   nothing   human   nor   super-natural   nor 

divine.    Just  itself:  a  goblin  virulence. 

In  all  my  Soul  and  bones  and  Mary-Mac- Laneness 

it    is    damn-the-Smell-of-Turpentine  as  a    bastard 

murderous  hurt. 

I  have  an  odd  feeling  God  has  no  more  power  over 

it  than  have  I. 

It  half-calls  for  a  different  Turpentine  God. 

I  am  shakily  mad  tonight,  I  believe,  from  a  so  slight 

sticky  matter. 


158 


God  compensates  me 


To-morrow 

IT'S  a  Sunday  midnight  and  IVe  just  eaten  a 
Cold  Boiled  Potato. 
I  shall  never  be  able  to  write  one-tenth  of  my 
fondness  for  a  Cold  Boiled  Potato. 
A  Cold  Boiled  Potato  is  always  an  unpremeditated 
episode  which  is  its  chief  charm. 
It's  nice  to  happen  on  a  book  of  poetry  on  a  window- 
sill.     It's  nice  to  surprise  a  square  of  chocolate  in  a 
glove  box.     It's  nice  to  come  upon  a  little  yellow 
apple  in  ambush.     It's  nice  to  get  an  unexpected 
letter  from  Jane  Gillmore.     It's  nice  to  unearth  a 
reserve  fund  of  silk  stockings  under  a  sofa  pillow. 
And  especially  it's  nice  to  find  a  Cold  Boiled  Potato 
on  a  pantry  shelf  at  midnight. 
I  like  caviare  at  luncheon.     And  I  like  venison  at 
dinner,   dark   and   bloody   and   rich.     And   I   like 
champagne  bubbling  passionately  in  a  hollow-stem- 
med glass  on  New  Year's  day.    And  I  like  terrapin 
turtle.      And    I    like    French-Canadian    game-pie. 
And  artichokes  and  grapes  and  baby  onions.    And 
none  of  them  has  the  odd  gnome-ish  charm  of  a 
Cold  Boiled  Potato  at  midnight. 
I  can  imagine  no  circumstance  in  which  a  Cold  Boiled 
Potato  would  not  take  precedent  with  me  at  mid' 
night.    If  I  had  a  broken  arm:   if  I  had  a  husband 


God  compensates  me  159 

lying  dead  in  the  next  room:  if  I  were  facing  abrupt 
worldly  disaster:  if  there  were  a  burglar  in  the 
house:  if  Vd  had  a  dayful  of  depression:  if  God  and 
opportunity  were  knocking  and  clamoring  at  my 
door:  I  should  disregard  each  and  all  some  minutes 
at  midnight  if  I  had  also  a  Cold  Boiled  Potato. 
I  love  to  read  Keats's  Nightingale  in  my  hushed 
life.  I  love  to  remember  Caruso  at  the  MetropoHtan 
singing  Celeste  A'ida.  I  love  to  watch  the  bewitching 
blonde  Blanche  Sweet  in  a  moving  picture.  I  love 
to  feel  the  summer  moonlight  on  my  eyelids.  And 
it's  disarmingly  contented  I  am  with  a  Cold  Boiled 
Potato  at  midnight. 

Content  is  my  rarest  emotion  and  I  get  it  at  midnight 
out  of  a  Cold  Boiled  Potato. 

Some  things  in  life  thrill  me.  Some  drive  me  gar- 
bledly  mad.  Some  uplift  me.  Some  debauch  me. 
Some  strengthen  and  enlighten  me.  Some  hurt,  hurt, 
hurt.  But  Tm  not  thrilled  nor  maddened  nor  up- 
lifted nor  debauched  nor  strengthened  nor  enlight- 
ened nor  hurt,  but  only  fed-up  and  fattened  in  spirit 
by  a  Cold  Boiled  Potato  at  midnight. 
I  stand  in  the  pantry  door  leaning  against  the  jamb, 
with  a  tiny  glass  salt-shaker  in  one  hand  and  the 
sweet  dark  pink  Cold  Boiled  Potato  in  the  other. 
And  I  sprinkle  it  with  salt  and  I  nibble,  nibble, 
nibble.    And  I  say  aloud,  *Gee,  it*s  good!' 


i6o  God  compensates  me 

I  liked  Cold  Boiled  Potato  at  four-and  twenty. 
I  liked  it  at  seventeen.  I  liked  it  at  twelve.  At  three 
I  climbed  on  cake-boxes  in  search  of  one.  And  now 
in  the  deep  bloom  of  being  myself  I  am  made  roundly 
replete  at  midnight  with  a  Cold  Boiled  Potato. 
A  Cold  Boiled  Potato — it  tastes  of  chestnuts  at 
midnight,  the  first  frost-kissed  chestnuts  in  the 
woods:  and  it  tastes  of  rain-water  and  of  salt  and  of 
roses;  it  tastes  of  young  willow-bark  and  of  earth 
and  of  grass-stems:  it  tastes  of  the  sun  and  the 
wind  and  of  some  nameless  relishingness  born  of  the 
summer  hillside  that  grew  it:  it  tastes  at  midnight 
so  like  SL  Cold  Boiled  Potato. 

A  precious  peach-colored  orchid,  an  antique  spider- 
web-like  lace  handkerchief,  a  delicate  purple  butter- 
fly, an  emerald  bracelet:  I'd  strive  for  each  of  those 
in  an  eagerly  casual  way.  But  it*s  like  an  ogre  at 
midnight  I  pounce  on  a  Cold  Boiled  Potato. 
A  Cold  Boiled  Potato  reminds  me  of  the  Dickens 
books  in  which  so  much  food  is  eaten  cold  and  tastes 
so  savory — even  the  *  wilderness  of  cold  potatoes* 
portioned  to  the  Marchioness  by  Sally  Brass.  And 
it  reminds  me  of  the  Rip  Van  Winkle  play — *give 
this  fellow  a  cold  potato  and  let  him  go.'  And  it 
reminds  me  of  Hamlet — funeral  baked  meats  might 
include  it.  And  it  reminds  me  of  Robin  Hood's 
merry  men,  and  Huckleberry  Finn,  and  the  Canter- 


God  compensates  me  i6i 

bury  Pilgrims,  and  the  Prodigal  Son,  and  all  the 
picturesque  wayfarers.  It  reminds  me  of  the  poor  as 
a  colorful  race  wrapped  around  with  hungry  ro- 
mance. It  reminds  me  that  life  is  full  of  life — rich 
and  fruitful  and  evolutionary  and  cosmic:  few  things 
feel  so  cosmic  as  a  Cold  Boiled  Potato  at  midnight. 
It  makes  me  want  as  I  nibble  to  plant  a  field  of 
potatoes  on  a  southern-exposed  hill  and  hoe  them 
and  dig  them  all  by  myself:  and  give  all  but  one  to 
the  poor  and  Boil  that  to  eat  Cold  at  midnight. 
I  have  to  be  very  hungry  to  crave  a  Cold  Boiled 
Potato,  but  being  hungry  no  possible  morsel  of  food 
can  so  interest  me  at  midnight.  The  same  potato 
hot  is  domestic  and  tasteless.  The  same  potato 
at  ten  in  the  evening  lukewarm  within  and  sodden 
with  memories  of  dinner,  is  a  repellent  item.  At 
midnight  it  is  all  unexpected  magnetism.  At  mid- 
night my  whole  being  is  profoundly  courteous,  woo- 
ingly  cordial  toward  a  Cold  Boiled  Potato. 
If  I  had  only  what  I  deserved  my  portion  might  well 
be  a  Cold  Boiled  Potato.  Intrinsically  it  is  rated  low 
and  I  know  me  to  be  a  sort  of  jezebel.  But  Fd  wonder 
each  midnight  if  whoever  metes  out  the  deserts  in  this 
surprising  universe  knew  with  what  gust  I  rise  at 
it — would  I  get  it. 

Nor  am  I  satisfied  like  the  meek  and  lowly  with  my 
midnight  supper  of  Cold  Boiled  Potato:   damn  the 


i62  God  compensates  me       *  I 

meek  and  lowly.  It's  a  satanic  delight  I  take  in  it. 
It's  a  sly  private  orgie  I  make  of  it:  a  pirate's 
banquet,  a  thieves'  picnic,  a  pagan  rite,  a  heathen 
revelry,  a  conceit  all  and  unhallowedly  my  own. 
My  thoughts  as  I  nibble  are  set  mostly  on  my 
villainies.  No  food  I  eat  brings  me  so  broad  a 
license  of  feeling — a  sense  of  freedom — as  a  Cold 
Boiled  Potato  at  midnight. 

On  a  Cold  Boiled  Potato  at  midnight  I  am  lightly 
valorous:  call  me  a  trickster  and  I'll  call  you  a 
rotter:  call  me  a  liar  and  I'll  call  you  a  traitor:  call 
me  a  coward  and  I'll  call  you  another:  not  pug- 
naciously but  gayly  and  serenely. 
I  am  then  in  my  most  bespeaking  mood.  Anyone 
who  met  me  standing  nibbling  in  a  pantry  doorway 
at  midnight  would  be  charmed.  I  would  talk  with 
a  dainty  ribaldry  and  offer  to  share  the  feast. 
For  shadow-things  piled  too  near  God  compensates 
me  in  unexpected  midnights  with  a  Cold  Boiled 
Potato:  along  with  it  a  pantry  doorway  to  stand 
in  and  a  little  glass  salt-shaker  to  hold  in  my  other 
hand. 


The  strange  braveness  163 


4        To-morrow 

IF  GOD  has  human  feelings  he  must  often  have  a 
burning  at  the  eyes  and  a  fullness  at  the  throat 
at  the  strange  Braveness  of  human  people: 
their  Braveness  as  they  go  on  in  the  daily  life,  with 
aching  dumbish  minds  and  disgruntled  bereft  bodies 
and  flattened  pinched  gnawed  hearts. 
The  easy  human  slattern  way  would  be  to  sink 
beneath  the  burden. 

Instead,  people:  I  and  Another  and  all  others — 
seamstresses  and  monotonous  clerks  and  lawyers 
and  housewives:  sit  upright  in  chairs  and  talk  into 
telephones  and  walk  fast  and  eat  breakfasts  and 
brush  hair:  all  the  while  marooned  in  a  morass  of 
small  wild  unexciting  tasteless  Pain. 
Of  others — what  do  I  know? 

But  I  might  say,  '  Look,  God,  I  am  not  fallen  on  the 
ground,  from  this  and  that — utterly  lost  and  down. 
But  sitting,  drooping  but  strong,  in  a  chair,  mending 
a  lamp-shade — neat,  orderly  and  at-it  in  my  misery.' 


164  Just  beneath  my  skin 


To-morrow 

THIS  I  write  is  a  strange  thing. 
So  close  to  fact:  so  far  from  it. 
So  close  to  truth:   so  surrounded  by  lies. 
It  does  not  contain  lies  but  is  someway  surrounded 
by  a  mist  of  lies. 

A  strange  thing  about  it  is  that  it  is  expressing  the 
Self  Just  Beneath  My  Skin. 

That  Self  is  someways  trivial  and  outlandish  and 
mentally  nervous,  flightly,  silly — silly  to  a  verge  of 
tragicness.  I  know  that  to  be  true  from  a  long 
acquaintance  with  me.  It  is  oddly  intriguing  to 
read  over  some  chapters  and  find  it  shown. 
Some  unconscious  exact  photography  aids  my  writing 
talent. 

Some  chapters  are  bewilderingly  and  mysteriously 
true  to  life. 

My  everyday  self  that  casually  speaks  to  this  or 
that  person  is  nothing  like  this  book.  My  absorbed 
self  that  writes  a  letter  to  an  intimate  acquaintance 
is  not  like  this  book.  My  heartfelt  self  that  deeply 
loves  a  friend,  and  gives  of  its  depths,  and  thrills 
answeringly  to  other  depths,  is  not  like  this  book. 
This  book  is  my  mere  Hidden  Self — just  under  the 
skin  but  hid  away  closer  than  the  Thousand 
Mysteries:  never  shown  to  any  other  person  in  any 


Just  beneath  my  skin  i6s 

conversation  or  any  association:  never  would  be 
shown:  never  could  be. 

How  Another,  any  Other,  would  come  out:  what 
Another  would  show:  photographed  Beneath  the 
Skin — what  do  I  know? 

Perchance  ten  times  more  trivial  and  inconsequent 
and  mad  than  Me. 

If  Another  thinks  Me  someway  mad,  let  him  look  at 
Himself  Just  Beneath  the  Skin. 
Perchance  Another  every  day  as  he  thanks  a  janitor 
for  holding  open  a  door,  would  much  prefer  to  drive 
a  long  rusty  brad-nail  deep  into  the  janitor's  skull. 
Perchance  Another  has  a  brain  like  Goethe,  a  Soul 
like  a  humming-bird,  a  Heart  like  a  little  round  nut- 
meg. 

What  do  I  know? 
I  know  what  I  am. 
Another  may  know  what  he  is. 
But  I  can't  tell  Me  to  Another  and  Another  can't 
tell  Himself  to  Me. 
I  can  tell  Me  to  myself  and  write  it. 
Another  if  he  reads  will  see  Me :  but  not  as  I  see  Me. 
Instead,   through   many  veil-curtains   and  glasses, 
very  darkly. 


1 66  God's  kindly  caprice 


To-morrow 

FOR  twenty-five  cents  and  one  hour  and  twelve 
minutes  one  may  get  in  this  present  detailed 
world  a  bit  of  unforgettable  complete  en- 
chantment. 

So  I  found  to-day  in  a  moving-picture  theater.  A 
Carmen,  the  real  Carmen  of  Prosper  Merimee 
glowed,  vibrated,  lived  and  died  with  passion  on  a 
white  screen. 

Of  all  prose  writers  I  know  Prosper  Mdrimee  is  the 
one — (intimate  and  sensitively  ahve  as  if  I  had  Iain 
against  his  shoulder  as  I  read  *La  Guzia*  and 
*  Venus  d'llle'  —he  melts  into  my  veins — )whom  I 
would  most  eagerly  see  interpreted.  Of  all  fiction 
characters — if  she  is  fiction — the  poignant  Carmen 
is  the  one  I  would  most  eagerly  see  realized. 
Carmen  is  one  of  those  fictions  which  are  truer  to 
life  than  life  is.  Such  fiction-things  are  all  around, 
touching  everybody:  the  spoken  truths  which  grow 
false  at  being  spoken:  the  thought  lies  which  turn 
to  truths  the  moment  they  touch  words. 
I  have  heard  Carmen  sung  and  seen  her  filmed  by  the 
lustrous  Farrar,  and  I  have  seen  her  play-acted  by 
some  lesser  fights.  But  Bizet's  opera,  a  sparkfing 
music-storm,  creates  a  sonant  objective  Carmen,  a 
beautiful  bloody  lyric,  remote  from  Merimde  who 


God's  kindly  caprice  167 

made  a  Carmen  intensely  peculiar  to  his  own  sub- 
jective art.    And  the  stage-Carmen  has  always  been 
a  stage-Carmen  waiting  in  dusty,  draughty  wings  for 
her  cues.    It  remained  for  the  cinematograph,  which 
is  a  true  literal  mirror  of  human  expression,  to  make 
Carmen  burst  into  violent  physical  life. 
But  it  was  less  the  scopes  of  the  films  which  made  Car- 
men animate  than  it  was  the  virile  woman  who 
played  her.    It  was  acting — but  acting  in  the  sense  of 
losing  and  sinking  and  saturating  and  dissolving  her- 
self in  another  woman's  temperament:  and  by  it  she 
achieved  some  strong  sword,  keen  shadings  of  the 
Carmen  character — to  the  hair*s-breadth. 
And  she  looked  like  Carmen.    It  was  not  important  to 
the  vigorous  fire  of  her  acting  but  it  made  bewitch- 
ment in  the  portrait.    No  one  I  have  before  seen  play 
Carmen  fitted  the  elusive  points  of  her  description. 
*Her  eyes  were  set  obliquely  in  her  head  but 
they  were  magnificent  and  large.    Her  lips, 
a  little  full  but  beautifully  shaped,  revealed 
a  set  of  teeth  as  white  as  newly-skinned 
almonds.     Her  hair  was  black  with  blue 
lights  on  it  like  a  raven's  wing,  long  and 
glossy.    To  every  blemish  she  united  some 
advantage  which  was  perhaps  all  the  more 
evident  by  contrast.    There  was  something 
strange  and  wild  about  her  beauty.     Her 


1 68  God's  kindly  caprice 

face  surprised  you  at  first  sight  but  nobody 
could  forget  it.    Her  eyes  especially  had  an 
expression  of  mingled  sensuality  and  fierce- 
ness which  I  had  never  seen  in  any  human 
glance.     Gypsy's  eye,  wolfs  eye' — 
This  (from  the  English  translation  of  the  story  by 
Lady  Mary  Loyd)  fitted  to  a  charm  the  pictured 
vision  of  the  foreign-looking  woman — her  name  is 
Theda  Bara — who  flung  a  throbbing  Carmen  across 
the  screen  with  indescribable  heat  and  color  and 
luster.    It  was  comparable  only  to  the  muscular  force 
of  the  original  which  that  Merimee  rubs  nervously 
and  heavily  into  one's  thoughts.    I  felt  it  someway 
satisfyingly  unbelievable — an  illusion  more  actual 
than  actuality:  a  dream  which  outbore  fact. 
I  suppose  there's  no  other  character  like  Carmen  for 
flaming  roundness   in  all  fiction:    fifled  with   her 
treacheries  yet  purely  true  to  herself,  without  fear, 
utterly  game:    fierce,  coarse,  ruthless  and  reckless 
yet   wrapped   in   a  maddening  unwitting    pathos: 
strong  and  bold  and  cruelly  poised  yet  capable  of 
sudden  complete  surrender:  ignorant  and  abandoned 
and  criminal  in  every  instinct  yet  beyond  every 
Httleness,  every  pettiness:  sensual  yet  contemptuous 
and  indiff'erent  in  it,  a  woman  of  essential  chastity. 
Carmen  is  the  one  criminal  conception  in  whom  there 
is  no  vulgar  evil,  no  personal  maculateness  though 


God*s  kindly  caprice  169 

wrecking  all  the  wildness  of  her  temper  in  her  tem- 
pestuous days*-journeys.  She  is  a  romantic 
murderous  appeal  to  human  super  judgment.  It 
was  this  isolate  quality  of  her  which  Theda  Bara 
gave  out  with  mystic  masterful  art.  She  gauged  the 
personal  odors  and  blood-pressures  of  Carmen. 
She  slipped  into  Carmen's  skin  and  first  sucked  in 
and  then  breathed  out  the  irresistible  menacingness 
and  arrest  ingruination  of  her  beautiful  diabolic  spirit. 
A  little  feverish  artistic  thrill  ran  in  my  veins  as  I 
sat  in  the  dark  watching. 

'She  had  thrown  her  mantilla  back,'  says 
Don  Jose  in  the  translated  tale,  *to  show 
her  shoulders  and  a  great  bunch  of  acacias 
that  was  thrust  into  her  chemise.  She  had 
another  acacia  bloom  in  the  corner  of  her 
mouth  and  she  walked  along  swaying  her 
hips  like  a  filly  from  the  Cordova  stud  farm. 
In  my  country  anyone  who  had  seen  a 
woman  dressed  in  that  fashion  would  have 
crossed  himself.  In  Seville  every  man  paid 
her  some  bold  compliment  on  her  appear- 
ance. She  had  an  answer  to  each  and  all 
with  her  hand  on  her  hip —  "Come,  my 
love,"  she  began  again,  "make  me  seven 
ells  of  lace  for  my  mantilla,  my  pet  pin- 
maker."    And  taking  the  acacia  blossom 


1 70  God's  kindly  caprice 

out  of  her  mouth  she  flipped  it  at  me  with 
her  thumb  so  that  it  hit  me  just  between 
the  eyes.    I  tell  you,  sir,  I  felt  as  if  a  bullet 
had  struck  me.' 
This  first  meeting  of  Carmen  with  the  dragoon  was 
pictured  in  a  brilliant  hot-looking  plaza  as  if  before 
the  cigarette  factory  in  Seville.     This  woman  in 
throwing  the  flower  at  the  soldier  expressed  wonder- 
fufly  in  one  fleet  moment,  by  hand  and  lip  and  eye, 
the  savage  sordid  poetry  and  passionate  freedom — 
that  unearthly  fragrance — which  is  Carmen. 
The  film  version  followed  the  scenes  of  the  opera 
rather  than  the  story,  which  took  nothing  from  the 
headlong  truth  of  the  central  figure. 
But   no   picturing   can    equal    the    star-clarity   of 
Merimee's  prose  in  Carmen's  death-scene — a  thing 
of  a  piercing  pathos  comparable  to  nothing  I  know 
in  writing. 

'After  we  had  gone  a  little  distance  I  said 

to  her,   "So,  my  Carmen,  you  are  quite 

ready  to  follow  me,  isn't  it  so?" 

She  answered,  "Yes,  I'll  follow  you  to  the 

death — but  I  won't  live  with  you  any  more." 

We  had  reached  a  lonely  gorge.    I  stopped 

my  horse. 

"Is  this  the  place?"  she  said. 

And  with  a  spring  she  reached  the  ground. 


God's  kindly  caprice  171 

She  took  ofF  her  mantilla  and  threw  it  at 
her  feet,  and  stood  motionless  with  one  hand 
on  her  hip,  looking  at  me  steadily. 
"You  mean  to  kill  me,  I  see  that  well,"  she 
said.  "It  is  fate.  But  you'll  never  make 
me  give  in." 

I  said  to  her:  "Be  rational,  I  implore  you; 
listen  to  me.  All  the  past  is  forgotten.  Yet 
you  know  it  is  you  who  have  been  my  ruin — 
it  is  because  of  you  that  I  am  a  robber  and 
a  murderer.  Carmen,  my  Carmen,  let  me 
save  you,  and  save  myself  with  you." 
"Jose,"  she  answered,  "what  you  ask  is  im- 
possible. I  don't  love  you  any  more.  You 
love  me  still  and  that  is  why  you  want  to 
kill  me.  If  I  liked  I  might  tell  you  some 
other  lie,  but  I  don't  choose  to  give  myself 
the  trouble.  Everything  is  over  between 
us  two.  You  are  my  rom  and  you  have  the 
right  to  kill  your  romi,  but  Carmen  will  al- 
ways be  free.  A  calli  she  was  born  and  a 
calli  she'll  die." 

"Then  you  love  Lucas?"  I  asked. 
"Yes,  I  have  loved  him — as  I  loved  you — 
for  an  instant — less  than  I  loved  you,  per- 
haps.   And  now  I  don't  love  anything.    And 
I  hate  myself  for  ever  having  loved  you." 


172  God's  kindly  caprice 

I  cast  myself  at  her  feet,  I  seized  her  hands, 
I  watered  them  with  tears,  I  reminded  her 
of  all  the  happy  moments  we  had  spent  to- 
gether, I  offered  to  continue  my  brigand's 
life,  if  that  would  please  her.  Everything, 
sir,  everything — I  offered  her  everything  if 
she  would  only  love  me  again. 
She  said:  "Love  you  again?  That's  not 
possible.  Live  with  you?  I  will  not  do  it." 
I  was  wild  with  fury.  I  drew  my  knife.  I 
would  have  had  her  look  frightened  and  sue 
for  mercy — but  that  woman  was  a  demon. 
I  cried:  "For  the  last  time  I  ask  you.  Will 
you  stay  with  me?" 

"No!  No!  No!"  she  said  and  she  stamped 
her  foot.  Then  she  pulled  a  ring  I  had 
given  her  off  her  finger  and  cast  it  into  the 
brushwood.  I  struck  her  twice  over — I  had 
taken  Garcia's  knife  because  I  had  broken 
my  own.  At  the  second  thrust  she  fell 
without  a  sound.  It  seems  to  me  that  I 
can  still  see  her  great  black  eyes  staring  at 
me.  Then  they  grew  dim  and  the  lids 
closed. — For  a  good  hour  I  lay  there  pros- 
trate beside  the  corpse.' — 
No  play-acting  could  make  the  scene  so  pregnant 
and  palpitant  with  human-stuff  and  alive  in  vision 


God's  kindly  caprice  173 

as  that  translucent  jewel-prose  of  Merime'e.  But 
so  close  as  one  art  may  counterfeit  another,  by 
drinking-up  the  fiery  spirit  essence  which  informs  it, 
so  close  did  this  actor-woman  compass  and  consum- 
mate the  strong  delicious  unafraidness  of  Carmen's 
death-hour. 

The  scene  was  staged  as  in  the  opera — a  court  out- 
side the  bull-fighting  arena,  with  Carmen  richly 
bejeweled  and  dressed  in  the  lacy  smart-lady 
clothes  of  the  Toreador's  mistress.  But  that  was 
nothing.  The  gypsy  wildness  of  the  written  scene 
was  in  every  insolently  splendid  bodily  movement 
and  each  fateful  loveliness  of  eyes  and  lips  of  the 
fulfilling  Theda  Bara. 

I  can  still  see  the  dark  drooping-Iidded  dying  eyes. 
I  sensed  Carmen  in  conscious  chambers  of  my  Mind. 
I  felt  her  in  my  throat.  It  was  Carmen  herself  living 
and  breathing  near  me,  the  fearsomely  adorable 
Carmen  who  has  haunted  the  edge  of  my  thoughts 
since  I  first  read  her. 

There  are  some  odd  crudenesses  in  Theda  Bara's 
acting  which  had  the  eff'ect  of  making  her  un-stagey, 
unobvious.  They  made  her  humanly  vibrant. 
And  they  added  a  devilish  wistfulness  to  her  Carmen 
and  a  surprising  feel  of  genuineness  to  the  whole 
masque. 
The  actor's  art  brings  out  the  romance  which  is 


174  God^s  kindly  caprice 

in  human  bone-and-flesh.  And  Theda  Bara  seems 
someway  a  master  of  its  physical  and  spiritual 
subtleties.  She  expressed  the  swift  emotion  of 
Carmen  by  ringing  shghtest  possible  changes  on 
her  own  virile  and  mobile  body:  insolence  by  kim- 
boing  an  elbow:  cruelty  by  the  twitch  of  a  wrist: 
sensual  feeling  by  moving  a  knee  and  an  ankle: 
murder  in  the  twisting  of  her  waistline:  a  fleet 
repressed  animal  tenderness  by  a  posture  of  shoulder 
and  breast:  a  heartbreak  of  mirth  in  her  careless 
vivid  lips:  the  desperate  bravery  of  that  death  by 
the  tilt  of  her  potent  chin:  the  hurricane-freedom 
of  Carmen's  soul  by  lifting  her  face  and  her  arms  in 
the  night  wind.  She  worked  with  an  exquisite 
muscular  sincerity,  as  if  she  strongly  gave  her  best 
of  brain  and  blood  and  mettle  to  the  part. 
I  looked  at  photographs  of  her  which  decorated  the 
lobby  of  the  theater.  She  looks  a  beautiful  and 
earnest-seeming  girl  of  a  mental  rather  than  a 
physical  caste,  with  melancholy  dark  eyes,  a  child- 
like mouth-profile  and  the  shm  partrician  hands  of  a 
Bourbon  duchess.  She  will  live  in  my  warmed 
memory  as  the  star  of  all  the  Carmens. 
A  flood  of  hfe  and  color  goes  into  the  staging  of  a 
Carmen  film:  a  throng  of  attractive  faces  and  bodies 
of  people,  women  and  men  and  lovely  children, 
move  through  it  in  a  pulsating  gay  pageant:  flowers 


God*s  kindly  caprice  175 

and  Spanish  prettinesses  of  costume  and  country-side 
and  street  and  cafe  are  all  over  it,  bright  as  life: 
and  sweet  winds  blow  in  it  and  leaves  and  grasses 
wave  and  flutter,  and  the  sunshine  melts  and  mellows 
the  air — all  as  if  one  saw  it  thrice-enlarged  through 
windows.  It  is  not  poetry — it  is  not  in  itself  any  art, 
but  a  dear  delectable  counterfeit  of  it,  a  miracle- 
taste  of  the  outer-looking  madly-peopled  world. 
For  me  it  meant  my  long-adored  Merim^e  given 
sudden  brief  life,  the  haunting  Carmen  turned  into 
flesh:  a  spell  of  silent  human-music  which  glowed 
and  burned  upon  me  like  gentle  fire. 
Often  is  God  thus  capriciously  kind  to  me. 


176  A  fascinating  creature 


To-morrow 

I  AM  a  fascinating  creature. 
I  move  in  no  stultifying  ruts.  There's  no  real 
yoke  of  custom  on  my  shoulders.  My  round 
white  breasts  beneath  their  black  serge  are  con- 
current with  nothing  settled  or  subservient  or 
discreet. 

My  Mind  goes  in  no  grooves  made  by  other  minds. 
It  lives  like  a  witch  in  a  forest,  weaving  its  spells, 
revelling  in  smooth  vivid  adventure.  When  I  look 
at  a  round  gray  stone  by  a  roadside  I  look  at  it  not 
as  a  young  woman,  not  as  a  person,  not  as  an  artist, 
nor  a  geologist,  nor  an  economist,  but  as  Me — as 
Mary  MacLane — and  as  if  there  had  not  before 
been  a  round  gray  stone  by  a  roadside  since  the 
world  began.  When  I  look  at  a  chair  with  my  somber 
eyes  I  say  to  the  chair,  *What  other  persons  may 
see  when  they  look  at  you,  chair,  I  don't  know — 
how  could  I  know?  But  I  well  know  what  I  see  and 
that  what  I  see  is  uninfluenced  by  other  eyes  that 
may  have  looked  at  you,  were  they  Aristotle's  or 
Gahleo's  or  an  archangel's.'  There  may  be  equally 
egotistic  viewpoints — in  Waco-Texas,  or  Japan,  or 
Glasgow-Scotland  or  the  Orkney  Islands,  where  not? 
I  don't  know — I  don't  care.  What  is  it  to  me? 
I  know  my  own  virile  vision  and  that  it  thrills  and 


A  fascinating  creature  177 

informs  and  translates  me  as  if  crackling  bright- 
jagged  lightnings  broke  along  my  sky. — 
It  is  a  night  of  whispering  breezes  and  little  restless 
clouds,  an  endearing  night.  It  makes  solitude  a 
delectation.  I  walked  out  in  it,  in  the  glimmering 
moonlight  past  buildings  and  houses  and  mines  and 
mounds.  My  thoughts  as  I  walked  were  all  of  Me: 
how  fascinating  is  Me. 

I  came  in  at  midnight  and  met  Me  in  my  mirror. 
I  pushed  my  three-cornered  hat  backward  off  my 
head,  slipped  out  of  my  loose  coat  and  dropped  my 
squeezed  gloves.  I  sank  fatiguedly  into  a  little 
chair  before  the  mirror,  tipped  the  chair  forward  on 
its  front  legs,  rested  my  elbows  on  the  bureau  and 
my  chin  in  my  hands  and  looked  absorbedly  at 
myself.  Lovingly,  tenderly,  discerningly,  marveling 
and  absorbed  and  deeply  fascinated  I  looked  at  Me 
in  the  mirror.  *You  enchanted  one!*  said  I,  *You 
Witch-o'-the- world !  you  Mary  MacLane! — who  you 
are  /  don't  know — what  you  are  I  but  partly  know. 
You're  my  Companion,  my  'Familiar,  my  Lover,  my 
wilding  Sweetheart — I  love  you!  I  know  that — 
that's  enough.  I  love  your  garbled  temper,  your 
aching  thoughts,  your  troubled  Heart,  your  wasted 
spirit.  I  know  much,  much,  much  of  you  and  love 
you!  I  love  your  beauty-sense  and  your  proud 
scornful    secret    super-sensitiveness.      I    love  your 


lyS  A  Jascinating  creature 

Eyes  and  your  Lips  and  your  bodily  Fire  and  Ice' — 
— to  know  oneself:  apart  from  all  the  world! 
One  looking  at  me  sees  a  cold-poised  young  woman, 
reserved  and  aloof,  slightly  diffusing  insolence  and 
inspiring  misgivings. 

But  I  looking  at  Me  see  a  woman  standing  high  on 
flame-washed  battlements  of  her  life  in  whom  burn 
and  beat  the  spirits  and  lights  and  star-discords  of 
uncounted  tired  lustrous  ages.  I  see  me  forlorn  and 
radiant,  drab  and  brilHant.  I  see  me  wrapped  in  a 
fiery  potentiality  of  pain  and  beauty  and  love  and 
sorrow.  I  hear  wild  voices  in  Me  like  horrid-sweet 
wailing  of  ghost-violins,  muted  but  crying  loudly 
in  frightful  reasonless  vital  joy  and  in  unspeakable 
terror  and  sadness.  I  see  Me  ragged-clothed,  bleed- 
ing, with  disordered  tangled  hair  and  bloodshot  eyes, 
with  coarse  soiled  hands,  broken-nailed,  like  a 
criminal's:  a  woman  of  woes.  And  I  see  Me  wistful 
in  quiet  pure  garments  like  one  seeking  light.  I  see 
Me  old  as  old  sin  and  young  as  new  Spring  days. 
I  see  Me  un-sanely  sensitive  and  hardened  over — 
closed  in  worldly  cases:  guarded  antagonism  round 
my  thoughts,  protecting  indifference  round  my 
Heart,  dead  silence  round  my  Soul.  I  see  Me  with 
brains  to  know,  with  prescient  mind  to  grasp,  with 
mobile  sense  to  feel.  I  see  Me  all  futile,  all  hopeless, 
all  miserable.     I  see  Me  all  poetry.     I  see  Me  all 


A  fascinating  creature  179 

wonder,  mystery  and  beauty.  I  see  Me! — 
— much  more  than  that,  this  Me  sitting  here!  my 
deep  gray  wanton  dark  eyes:  my  lips — like  pink 
flowers — with  the  inscrutable  expression:  my  white 
fingers — slim,  strong,  glossy-nailed,  silken  at  the 
tips.  My  glass  gives  Me  back  to  Me,  sitting  by  it, 
languid  of  Body,  tense  of  spirit  and  Mind,  bathed 
in  witcheries  of  Self — 

I  love  my  Mary  MacLane!    Ah — ;I  love  her! 
It  is  good — since  I  can't  find  God,  since  I  can't  find 
way-of-truth  however  I  grope  about. 
Every  human  friendship  I  form  throws  me  back  more 
completely  on  myself. 
Whom  then  shall  I  love  but  myself? 
I  know  my  own  human  enchanJitments  and  that  they 
never  fail  me. 

ril  know  them  more!  I'll  love  them  more! — I'll 
love  them  in  sane  madness  lest  mad  madness  over- 
take and  destroy  Me,  Soul  and  bones. 


i8o  No  resonance 


To- 


morrow 


M 


Y  LIFE,  myself,  I  know  are  nothing  noble, 

nothing  constructive. 

There  is  no  resonance  in  this  analysis,  but 
all  Dissonance. 

Something  lives,  lives  muscularly  in  me  that  con- 
stantly betrays  me,  destroys  me  against  all  my  own 
convictions,  against  all  my  own  knowledge,  against 
all  my  own  desire. 
It  may  be  true  of  Everybody.' 
I  don't  know.    I  think  about  it  but  get  nowhere. 
It  seems  someway  unlike  God  to  make  each  person  a 
something  all  of  cross-purpose. 
But  I  doubt  that  I  am  different  from  Everybody. 
I  doubt  if  I  am  anyway  abnormal. 
I  am  very  sane. 

A  match-flame  burns  me  the  same  as  it  burns  Every- 
body: pins  prick  me  and  hurt. 
Yet  I  look  in  myself  and  see,  through  harmonic 
details,  the  massed  Dissonance. 
I  am  dying  in  a  pit. 


Black-browed  Wednesdays  i8i 


To-morrow 

ALL  my  life  IVe  liked  the  Back  of  a  magazine. 
Some  black-browed  Wednesday  I   purchase 
a  magazine,  a  fifteen-cent  one,  and    read 
it  through.     I   read  the  stories  and  they  deeply 
engage  or  lightly  interest  me.     I  read  the  *  special 
articles'  and  if  they  tell  about  flying  machines  or 
wild    birds    or    hospitals    or    woman-prisoners    in 
penitentiaries  they  charm  or  absorb  my  thoughts, 
I  look  at  the  illustrations  and  try  to  decide  whether 
they  are  art  or  science  or  mechanism.     I  read  the 
verse  and  if  it's  poetry  it  exhilarates  me  as  if  closed 
shutters  were  opened  to  let  Day  into  a  gloomy  Room. 
Then  I  read  the  advertisements  in  the  Back  and 
they  do  all  of  those  things  to  me  in  comforting  life- 
giving    oxygen-furnishing   ways.      Each    advertise- 
ment is  a  short  story  with  an  eerie  little  *pIot'  in  it: 
each  is  a  special  article  full  of  purpose:    each  is 
fruitful  poetry:  and  in  my  two  hands  I  all-but  have 
and  hold  those  wonderful  Things  they  exploit. 
They  make  me  feel  it's  my  birthday  and  I'm  pre- 
sented a  wealth  of  lavish  gifts. 
They  make  me  feel  it's  all  a  world  of  playthings. 
They  make  me  feel  like  a  baby  with  a  rattle,  a  ball 
and  a  hoop  of  bells. 
I  like  everything  in  the  Back  of  a  magazine. 


1 82  Black-browed  Wednesdays 

I  like  the  Revolvers,  handsome  plausible  short- 
barreled  Revolvers  with  pictures  of  ordinary  people 
in  dim-lit  midnight  bedrooms,  and  ordinary  expected- 
looking  burglars  climbing  in  windows — Revolvers 
of  ten  shots  and  of  six,  and  of  different  cahbers, 
and  all  of  them  gleamingly  mystically  desirable: 
I  like  the  Soaps,  smooth  amorous  appetizing  Soaps, 
some  in  luxurious  Paris  packets,  and  others  spread 
out  in  blue  water  and  rosy  foam,  splashed  in  by 
athletic  Archimedesque  young  men  and  fat  creamy 
babies  and  slim  beautiful  ladies — Mary  Garden 
Soap  of  pungent  delicious  scent,  tar  Soap  for  the 
long  lovely  hair  of  girls,  austere  Ivory  Soap — It 
floats:  I  like  the  Rubber  Heels  of  resilient  charm 
so  tellingly  pictured  and  described  that  at  once  I 
desire  them  beneath  my  spirit-heels — springy  and 
solid  and  thick  and  firm:  I  like  the  Tooth-pastes 
and  Tooth-powders  and  Tooth-lotions  in  tubes  and 
tins  and  bottles,  each  bearing  beneficent  messages 
to  the  human  white  teeth  of  this  world — one  un- 
failing kind  coming  lyrically  out  like  a  ribbon  and 
lying  flat  on  the  brush:  I  like  the  foods — of  mir- 
aculous spotless  purity  and  enticement — Biscuits 
and  Chocolate  and  Figs,  and  Foie-gras  in  thick 
glossy  little  pots,  so  richly  pictured  and  sung  that 
merely  to  let  my  thoughts  graze  in  their  pasturage 
fattens   my   Heart:     I   like   the   men's   very   thin 


Black-browed  Wednesdays  183 

Watches,  and  men's  Garters — no  metal  can  touch 
you — ,  and  men's  flufFy-Iathered  shaving  sticks,  and 
men's  trim  smart  flawless  tailored  Suits,  in  none  of 
which  I  have  use  or  interest  until  I  find  them  in  the 
Back  of  a  magazine — where  at  once  they  grow  charm- 
ing and  romantic:  I  like  the  jars  and  boxes  and  tubes 
and  glasses  of  Cold  Cream,  Cold  Cream  fit  for  skins 
of  goddesses,  fit  for  elves  to  feed  on — a  soft  satiny 
scented  snow-white  elysium   of  wax   and  vaseline 
and  almond  paste,  pictured  in  forty  alluring  shapes 
till  it  feels  pleasantly  ecstatic  just  to  be  hving  in 
the  same  world  with  bewitching  vases  of  Cold  Cream, 
Cold  Cream,  Cold  Cream — always  bewitching  and 
lovely  but  never  so  notably  and  festively  as  in  the 
Back  of  a  magazine:    and  I  like  the  Pencils:    and 
Book-cases:    and  Silver:    and  Jewels:    and  Glass: 
and    Gloves:     and    Shoes — beautiful    Shoes:     and 
Fountain-pens:    and  Leather  things:    and  Paint — 
silkish    salubrious    Paints,    house-Paints,    and    the 
panegyrics  with  them — they  make  me  long  to  own 
a  spirit-house  and  paint  it  liberally:    and   Rugs: 
and    Varnish:     and    Clothes — wonderful    Clothes: 
and   Bungalows:     and    Phonographs — his    master's 
voice:  and  Paper — fine- wrought  Paper  to  write  on — 
bond  and  linen   and   hand-pressed,   pale-tinted — a 
vast  virgin  treasure:  and  Oranges:  and  Cigarettes — 
a  shilling  in  London  a  quarter  here:    and  Water- 


184  Black-browed  Wednesdays 

Bottles  of  powdery  rubber:  and  Stockings — patrician 
Stockings  which  take  me  into  realms  of  silk-Iooms 
and  delicate  dyes  and  slim  ankles:  and  Candle- 
Shades  :  and  Candle-Sticks :  and  countless  Cosmetics 
— Cosmetics  of  tender  colors  for  the  outer  women: 
and  Sealingwax  indescribably  useless  and  attractive: 
and  Tennis-Racquets:  and  Ivory — smooth  Vantine 
Ivory  toys  and  trinkets  polished  softly  bright  as 
moonlight — and  their  lily-worded  descriptions  like 
restrained  sonnets:  and  Washing  Powders — let  the 
Gold  Dust  twins  do  your  work:  and  Shower-baths: 
and  Evans'  Ale:  and  Flying  Boats:  and  Umbrellas: 
and  Cameras — if  it  isn't  an  Eastman  it  isn't  a  kodak: 
and  boxes  of  Candy — sweet  wilderness  of  chocolates 
— their  very  makers*  names  have  a  melting  gust — 
Allegretti,  Huyler,  Clarence  Crane,  Maillard — 
cloying  courtiers  all:  and  Diamond  Dyes — a  child 
can  use  them:  and  Veranda  Screens — she  can  look 
out  but  he  can't  look  in:  and  Cedar  Chests:  and 
Chartreuse  from  Carthusian  monasteries:  and 
Perfumes — Perfumes  in  their  maddening-sweet  pride. 
Perfumes  from  Paris,  Perfumes  bottled  in  thick 
crystal,  enchantingly  costly — each  American  dollar 
added  to  their  price-by-the-ounce  making  them 
fragranter  to  my  thoughts :  and  boxes  of  benevolent 
Matches,  and  captivating  Brooms,  and  fascinating 
Scouring-powders — a  Dutch  girl  on  the  can  chasing 


Black-browed  Wednesdays  185 

dirt — all  three  luscious  tempting  things  in  the  Back 
of  a  magazine:  and  Automobiles — ask  the  man  who 
owns  one:  and  Rifles — simple  and  formidable  and 
fine:  and  restful  Rat-poison — they  die  in  the  open 
air  seeking  water:  and  sacks  of  Flour — eventually 
why  not  now — flour  unusual  and  piquant  in  the 
Back  of  a  magazine,  flour  novel  and  endearing: 
and  Type- writers :  and  Mushrooms:  and  Monkey- 
Wrenches:  and  Rosaries:  and  Rock-salt — 
the  Back,  the  Back,  the  Back  of  a  magazine — 
There's  no  sadness  and  no  terror  in  the  Back  of  a 
magazine. 

And  it  is  for  Everybody,  Everybody. 
A  million  people  read  a  story  in  the  middle  of  the 
magazine  and  half  the  million  readily  miss  its  point. 
But  a  single  tin  of  Talcum  Powder  in  the  Back — 
the  whole  million  note  that  and  miss  nothing  in  it; 
it  gets  to  them  both  on  and  under  their  skin. 
Some  of  the  million  read  a  ten-line  poem  in  vers 
libre  in  the  front  of  the  magazine — and  nine-tenths 
of  their  number  are  hard-put  to  it:  the  mentalities 
of  this  human  race  being  mostly  shops  shut  down. 
It  is  something  pregnant  and  prophetic  to  a  poet, 
merely  musical  to  a  plain  prose  writer,  arrant  folly 
to  a  telephone  girl,  amusing  nonsense  to  a  butcher, 
a  comic  fantasy  to  a  milliner,  a  form  of  insanity  to 
a  plumber,  an  unknown  tongue  to  a  milk-man,  a 


1 86  Black-browed  Wednesdays 

kind  of  sin  to  a  Baptist  minister.  But  to  each  of 
those  a  Can  of  Soup  in  the  Back  of  the  same  magazine 
has  easily,  exactly  the  same  ox-tail-ish  meanings: 
it  reaches  them  where  they  live. 
A  thousand  persons  agree  with  an  article  about 
atavism  in  orang-outangs  and  ten  thousand  more 
quite  refute  it.  But  they  all  harmoniously  commit 
suicide  with  the  same  make  of  Revolver — hammer 
the  hammer — or  get  rousing  drunk  to  the  same 
degree  with  the  same  brand  of  high-powered  whis- 
key— Wilson,  that's  all. 

A  countess,  a  courtesan  and  a  convict-woman 
summarily  pass  over  the  front  and  middle  of  the 
magazine  as  containing  nothing  to  their  purpose. 
But  like  jungle  denizens  at  their  drinking  pool  the 
three  of  them  meet  hostilely  on  the  common  ground 
of  a  popular  Cigarette  featured  in  the  Back — a,  blend 
to  suit  every  taste — wherewith  they  unwittingly 
smoke  away  half  their  generic  differentiations. 
The  Colonel's  Lady  and  Judy  O'Grady  anoint  them- 
selves nightly  into  a  state  of  shining  invisible  kin- 
ship from  separated  twin  jars  of  the  same  bewitching 
Cold  Cream. 

Fm  not  sure  myself  and  Miss  Lily  Walker  of  the 
Broadway  chorus  regard  similarly  a  beauteous  box 
of  Rice  Powder:  she  perchance  would  at  once  dash 
madly  into  it  and  powder  herself  o'er  with  it,  whereas 


- 


Black-browed  Wednesdays  187 

I  would  fain  ponder  about  it  awhile  as  a  tiny  be- 
violeted  adventure.     But  pondering  or  powdering, 
equally  exciting  to  each  of  us  is  its  delicate  pale 
lilac  blazonment  in  the  Back  of  a  magazine. 
The  front  of  the  magazine  may  mean  little  to  you 
and  the  middle  of  the  magazine  may  mean  nothing 
to  me:  the  Back  of  it  none  of  us  escapes. 
It  is  for  Everybody,  Everybody. 
Even  Senegambians :   they  can  look  at  the  pictures 
and  marvel  over  them. 

I  can  there  meet  a  Senegambian  on  the  common 
ground  of  it  might  be  a  delicate  transparent  oval 
of  Pears'  Soap,  pretty  as  a  jewel  of  price:  perchance 
we  would  each  unconsciously  feel  we  wouldn't  be 
happy  till  we  got  it. 

It's  only  as  playthings  I  want  the  Things  in  the  Back 
of  a  magazine. 

To  me  they  are  toys,  lyrics  of  matter,  food  of  the 
senses. 

The  octroi  would  have  no  sympathy  with  my 
loiterings  among  their  wares.  It  is  a  fete  of  my  own, 
indolent  and  fanciful,  unrecognized  in  commerce. 
Any  article  I  may  put  to  its  forthright  use  in  actuality 
becomes  an  idyllic  toy  when  I  find  it  in  the  Back  of 
a  magazine.  The  desirable  Revolvers  are  not  fire- 
arms with  which  to  shoot  myself  and  burglars,  but 
only  bijous  to  have  and  handle  and  caress.     The 


1 88  Black-browed  Wednesdays 

luxuriant  vervain-  and  violet-scented  Soaps  are  not 
for  my  toilet,  but  something  to  eat,  for  my  astral 
body  to  feed  on— nourishing  food  they  make.  The 
lush  Cold  Creams  have  no  massaging  possibilities 
in  them — they  are  for  my  thoughts  to  gambol  among, 
for  my  meddlesome  spirit-fmgers  to  touch  and  fuss 
with  deliciously,  blissfully,  transcending  all  vulgar 
use.  The  men's  thin  Watches  mean  nothing  to  me 
as  Watches:  and  their  Garters — what's  it  to  me 
whether  no-metal-can-touch-you  or  no-metal-at-all? 
My  thoughts  merely  revel  and  juggle  with  them, 
picture  and  legend  —  they  are  pastimes  of  my 
child-self.  The  cream-woven  Note  Papers  are  not 
to  write  on  but  wherewithal  to  imagine  how  cool 
and  smooth  they  would  feel  drawn  slowly  across 
my  flushed  cheek.  A  sack  of  Flour — I  feel  only 
how  I'd  like  to  have  it  spilled  out — eventually- why- 
not-now — in  a  thick  warm-tinted  heap  on  the  blue- 
velvety  floor  of  my  room  that  I  might  roH  and  bathe 
in  it  and  feel  it  feathery-fluff"y  on  my  skin. 
So  I  play  with  my  toys  on  black-browed  Wednesdays. 
Some  Wednesdays  even  fail  to  be  black-browed 
because  there  are  Backs  to  magazines. 


The  conscious  analyst  189 


To-morrow 

I  DON'T  know  whether  I  write  this  because  I 
wear  two  plain  dresses  or  whether  I  wear  two 
plain  dresses  because  I  write  it. 
My  life  fell  into  a  lowering  mood  which  calls  for  but 
two  dresses:  which  mood  compels  me  to  write  out 
these  things  that  are  in  me  as  inevitably  as  heavy 
gathered  clouds  come  raining  to  the  ground.  The 
mood  having  overtaken  me  I  can  not  keep  from 
writing  this  day  after  day,  more  than  I  can  keep  from 
brushing  my  hair  every  day,  and  eating  lumps  of 
food  every  day,  and  picking  up  tiny  white  specks 
from  my  blue  rug. 

I  love  this  book  and  I  fear  and  hate  it.  I  love  the 
writing  of  it  though  it  is  a  finical  unobvious  task — 
more  so  than  it  looks.  And  often  I  fear  to  read  it 
over  lest  I  hurt  my  own  feelings.  And  I  hate  it  in 
ways.  I  am  a  particularly  sane  woman  when  alFs 
said.  And  many  things  I  come  to  in  me  are  grating 
and  inexplicable  and  incongruous. 
But  also  I  love  it.  It  is  my  companion  'when  the 
world  is  gone. '  I  am  as  solitary  as  if  I  had  no  human 
place  in  this  earth.  My  days  are  as  silent  as  if  I 
lived  in  it  alone.  The  few  voices  that  bespeak  me  in 
a  day  or  a  week  stop  at  my  ear-drums  and  are  im- 
mensely alien.     At  times,  for  weeks  on  end,  I  am 


1 90  The  conscious  analyst 

quite  alone  in  this  house  and  the  silence  then  has  a 
depth  and  a  hollowness.  From  it  I  feel  not  alone 
in  a  house  but  alone  in  a  world:  and  more  when  the 
family  is  in  the  house. 

And  it  is  what-should-l-do  if  I  had  not  a  writing 
talent  to  expend  me  upon  from  day  to  day,  and  so 
rest  me.  I  feel  God  around  some  corner  but  that 
feeling  is  no  rest,  but  only  an  odd  terror  which  wants 
the  dignity  of  terror. 

Times  I  wonder  if  I  shall  have  this  published  after- 
ward for  all  to  read  and  if  so  what  colors  it  will  paint 
on  my  world — and  what  else  may  befall. 
But  it's  an  aspect  dim  and  remote  now.  I  wearing 
but  two  nunHke  dresses  and  face  to  face  with  me, 
have  nothing  to  do  with  pubhshing  books  and  with 
the  beautiful  noisy  world  and  its  befallings.  It  is 
easy  to  believe  I  shall  never  again  have  to  do  with 
any  of  that.  This  may  be  my  death-mood.  I  am 
very  tired.  The  weight  of  being  a  person  is  heavy 
on  me  as  weights  of  lead.  And  still  I  know  if  I 
suddenly  bloomed  with  beautiful  frocks  and  went 
out  to-morrow  to  lose  myself  among  people,  people, 
people  I  should  at  once  achieve  a  veneer  of  the 
utmost  frivol.  I  have  an  odd  frivolous  quality  full 
of  an  ardor  and  strength,  with  all  of  my  mental 
mettle  in  it.  Also  I  know  if  I  did  that  now  it  would 
be  but  postponing  this  analytic  reckoning.      Which 


The  conscious  analyst  191 

would  confront  me  again  with  the  more  rancor,  the 

more  futileness  gathered  into  it  from  having  been 

put  off.  , 

This  book  and  the  two  dresses  are  my  present  portion. 

If  I  could  escape  them  (I  am  not  quite  sure  I  want 

to — but — hell!) — it    would    be    of   no    use.      They 

would  come  back  again  in  an  unexpected  ripeness 

of  time  and  demand  a  hearing:  an  exquisite  nervous 

tragic  hearing. 

They  are  such  stuff  as  the  conscious  analyst  is  made 

of. 

But  though  Fm  the  conscious  analyst  I  can't  quite 

tell  whether  I  write  the  book  because  I  wear  two 

plain  black  dresses  or  I  wear  those  because  I  write  it. 


192  Eye  when  I  mean  tooth 


To-morrow 

I  WRITE  it,  and  it's  a  surprising  book. 
It  is  not  what  on  the  surface  it  looks  to  be. 
I  do  not  write  what  my  clear  Mind  may  want 
to  say  to  the  v/hite  blank  paper. 
I  do  not  write  what  my  thoughts  are  saying  to  me. 
Those  things  are   facile,   uninformed — flat   mental 
pictures,  the  writer's  craft. 

I  write  what  still  voices  of  life:  voices  trivially  fright- 
ful in  their  secret  pettiness:  voices  of  all  my  life — 
merest  living — say  to  my  ancient  Soul  and  my 
young  present  Body  and  what  they  two  may  answer. 
I  am  in.  some  sort  a  wonderful  person — and  in  places 
I  do  that,  nearly  perfectly. 

I  am  also  tired  and  someway  whelmed  by  self- 
conscious  despair,  and  possessed  of  a  talent  imperfect 
and  inadequate  to  reveal  the  radiances  and  shades 
my  being  perceives :  and  in  places  I  fail. 
I  fail  remarkably.  I  write  Eye  when  I  mean  Tooth. 
I  write  Fornicate  when  I  mean  Caress.  I  write 
Wine  when  I  mean  Blood.  For  no  better  reason 
than  that  my  writing  hand  is  not  sufficiently  dexter- 
ous :  the  little  flashing  shutters  open  and  shut  so  quick 
that  the  second  ones  are  shut  and  the  third  starting 
to  open  before  I  have  got  written  the  things  I  saw 
through  the  first  ones. 
Only  not  always. 


A  wild  mare  193 


To-morrow 

ALSO  I  am  dissatisfying  to  myself. 
My  thoughts  smother  me:    they  keep  me 
from  life. 

I  am  a  hundred  times  more  introspective 
than  most  people,  most  women.  Most  women,  even 
conventional  ones,  are  lawless — the  more  conven- 
tional, the  more  lawless  usually. 
And  so  most  women  beat  me  to  life.  Where  they 
yield  to  an  impulse  the  moment  they  feel  it — I, 
because  an  impulse  itself  is  adventure-fabric — I  feel 
of  its  quality,  test  it  for  defects,  wash  a  little  corner 
of  it  to  see  if  the  color  will  run — and  conclude  not 
to  use  it. 

That  I  gaze  inward  at  the  garbled  biograph  of  Me 
keeps  me  from  several  sorts  of  violent  action. 
I  have  violent  action  in  me,  chained  in  analysis. 
Most  women  are  secretly  lawless  on  the  old  plan 
inaugurated  by  Eve — of  inclining  to  do  anything 
forbidden,  of  hugging  everything  they  are  unsup- 
posed  to  hug,  of  determinedly  kicking  over  the 
traces  when  coerced  too  much.  The  ban  is  the  chief 
attraction. 

It's  but  little  like  that  with  me.    There  would  be 
point  and  purpose  in  my  Action.    But  it  is  kept  in 
stupor  by  analysis. 
I  am  malcontent  about  that,  though  I  live  upon 


194  ^  ^ild  mare 

analysis.  I  hate  the  inaction  and  inertia  that  follow 
on  its  heels. 

I  could  be  an  anarchist.  I  condemn  anarchists  but 
not  as  I  condemn  Me.  I  would  respect  me  more 
were  I  this  moment  prisoned  in  a  real  bastile  for 
having  stuck  a  good  knife  into  a  bad  king.  I  could 
feel,  no  matter  how  foohsh  and  mistaken  in  itself 
the  act,  that  I  had  done  the  strong  and  brave  thing 
at  sacrifice  of  my  personal  selves.  The  dry  living- 
death  of  the  prison  would  be  compensated  for  each 
day  when  I  said  to  Me,  *  It  was  a  needful  honorable 
act  and  /  did  it:  for  once  in  my  Kfe  I  was  a  Regular 
Person.' 

There  would  be  a  nourishment  in  being  able  to  tell 
that  to  myself.  There  would  be  warming  food  in 
owning  one  so  brave  remembrance  of  myself 
But,  my  Soul-and-bones! — at  the  very  moment  of 
lifting  the  good  knife  a  thought  would  come:  *How 
is  this  king  worse  than  another?  What  rotten 
rascal  mightn't  rise  in  his  place?'  And  on  with  a 
lightning-trail  of  analysis  till  my  pale  hand  dropped 
inert  and  the  knife  in  it  grew  harmless  as  a  lily-petal. 
It  isn't  that  I  haven't  the  guts.  I  have. 
I  am  a  wild  mare  in  foal:  and  unfoaling. 


The  mist  195 


To-morrow 

BECAUSE    I    am    to    myself   someways    dis- 
satisfying and  exasperating  often  this  thing 
I  write  is  dissatisfying  and  exasperating. 
It  is  a  true  account  of  what  is  inside  me.    *  The  wine 
must  taste  of  its  own  grapes.' 

It  would  be  easier  to  make  it  an  untrue  account, 
for  fiction  is  the  most  effortless  of  writing.  So  I 
have  found  it.  And  I  am  very  clever. 
I  could  write  myself  as  a  pretty  dainty  harmlessly 
purring  one — the  leopard  with  claws  clipped  and 
fangs  drawn. 

When  my  dynamos  rest  I  am  like  that,  doubtless. 
But  the  wears  and  tears  of  breathing  and  the  in- 
fluences of  varied  life-details  and  of  clothes  worn  and 
food  eaten  start  me  moving  devilishly. 
Phases  of  a  score  of  persons,  men  and  women,  come 
to  hght  in  me. 

To  be  one  human  being  means  to  be  monstrously 
mixed. 

I  write  me  out  not  as  I  might  be,  nor  as  I  should  be — 
whatever  that  may  be — :   but  merely  as  I  am. 
As,  Just  Beneath  The  Skin,  I  am. 
So  my  written  account  must  come  out  someways 
dissatisfying     and     exasperating.      Logically     dis- 
satisfying and  divinely  and  ethically  exasperating. 


196  The  mist 

— a  passage  in  Vergil  tells  of  a  Mist  that  is  all  over 
and  about  this  world  from  the  human  'tears  that 
are  falling,  falling,  falling  always.'  Something,  and 
it  may  be  that  Mist,  makes  one's  view  of  everything 
— everything  in  life — a  little  blurred.  It  may  even 
blur  one's  view  of  oneself.  So  it  may  be  I  do  not 
see  myself  with  entire  clearness — 
I  only  know  I  write  me  as  clearly  as  I  see  me,  con- 
sidering the  Mist. 


A  white  liner  igj 


To-morrow 

TO-DAY  came  the  Finn  woman  and  cleaned 
my  blue-and- white  bedroom. 
She    comes    now    and    again    and    cleans 
excellently. 

I  would  like  to  clean  my  room  myself  but  lack  the 
strength  and  skill  to  do  it  well. 

But  I  stay  with  the  Finn  woman  and  show  her  how 
and  I  watch  her  work  and  muse  upon  her.  She 
would  be  called  in  England  a  charwoman,  but  in  this 
America  qf  the  vast  mongrel  heterogenesis  she  is  an 
unclassified  laborer. 

I  like  to  watch  her  and  talk  with  her  a  bit  and  dwell 
on  her  mixed  potentialities.  She  contrasts  fasci- 
natingly with  me. 

She  is  a  human  being  and  so  am  I,  and  beyond  and 
with  that  there  are  odd  parallels  and  similarities 
and  distinctions  between  her  and  me. 
Her  name  is  Josephina  and  she  looks  as  if  it  might  be. 
Mine  is  Mary  MacLane  but  I  don't  look  entirely 
like  it. 

She  lives  a  lonely  life  and  so  do  I,  differing  in  sort 
and  circumstance. 

I    am    middle-class    and    American    of    Canadian 
reminiscence,  and  early-thirty. 
Josephina  is  Finn  and  lower-class  with  a  'foreign' 


198  A  white  liner 

look,  and  she  is  forty-five  and  looks  sixty  and  is 
twelve  years  out  of  Finland. 

I  am  tallish  and  slim  and  weigh  nine  wavering  stone. 
The  Finn  woman  is  short  and  solid  and  weighs  all 
of  a  hundred  and  seventy  pounds. 
I  am  slender  of  flank  and  ankle,  narrow  through  the 
loins  and  bony  at  the  shoulders. 
The   Finn   woman   is   thick   everywhere,   broad   of 
girth  and  deep  of  chest  like  a  Percheron  stallion. 
I  am  darkish  with  dusky  gray  eyes. 
Josephina  is  dirty-blond  with  pale  narrow  blue  eyes 
like  a  china  doIFs. 

My  sex  feels  to  me  like  a  mysterious  sweetness. 
Josephina's   sex   looks   porcinely   obvious   and   un- 
interesting like  her  large  dubious  breasts. 
I  am  inwardly  full  of  strong-flavored  emotions. 
The  one  positive  outward  feeling  Josephina  manifests 
is  a  dull  but  comprehensive  hatred,  peculiar  to  her 
nationality  and  station,  for  everything  Swedish. 
The  Finn  woman  has  a  husband  now  and  had  a 
different  one  formerly. 
I  have  none  and  never  had. 
Josephina  is  elemental  primeval  woman. 
So  am  I  but  terrifically  qualified  by  complexity, 
incongruity. 

I  have  white  smooth  firm  beautiful  hands. 
Josephina's  hands  are  particularly  ugly  and  have  a 


A  white  liner  199 

menacing  look. 
I  have  quick  intelligence. 
Josephina  is  markedly  stupid. 
I  live  in  a  quiet  clean  bungalow. 
Josephina   lives   in   an   unusually   filthy   unrestful 
little  house. 

I  own  two  dresses  whose  personnel  alters  at  intervals. 
Josephina  owns  one  unchanging  dress,  septic, 
maculate  and  repellent. 

I  have  a  sense  of  humor  vivid  and  intriguing  to 
myself. 

Josephina  has  no  more  sense  of  humor  than  a  flat- 
iron. 

I  bathe  foamily  icily  each  morning. 
Josephina  would  seem  never  to  have  had  a  bath. 
She  cleans  windows  and  floors  and  rugs  for  thirty- 
five  cents  an  hour.  She  would  regard  it  as  a  fantastic 
waste  of  time  and  soap  to  clean  herself  for  nothing. 
I  own  in  a  still  flawed  fife  one  phase  which  is  an 
endless  treasure  of  beauty  and  power  and  charm 
and  fight:  my  love  for  John  Keats. 
The  Finn  woman  owns  about  the  same  thing  in  a 
fife  which  may  be  more  still  and  flawed  than  mine: 
her  love  for  strong  drink. 

There  begins  a  curious  fine  of  simifitude  between  us. 
I  feel  oddly  joyous  and  fight  of  heart  on  a  sofitary 
veranda  corner  with  the  John-Keats  poetry  book 


200  A  white  liner 

open  in  my  lap. 

And  Josephina  has  been  found  many  a  time  by 
Butte  policemen  sitting  alone  joyous  and  very  drunk, 
in  dark  alleys  with  empty  pint  bottles  strewn  all 
about  her. 

In  my  un-Keats  hours  I  am  mostly  mournful.  And 
Josephina  sober  has  all  the  melancholy  of  her  race 
with  an  added  gloom,  as  if  the  acetylene  had  run  out 
of  all  her  lamps.  That  my  melancholy  is  more  lus- 
trous than  hers  I  lay  to  her  native  dullness  as  against 
my  native  braininess,  and  to  alcohol's  having  rotting 
effects  on  human  mental  tissues:  whilst  John  Keats 
to  those  who  drink  his  poetry  is  a  starry  savior. 
I  like  to  think  there's  the  same  ambrosial  food  in  the 
Demon  Rum  for  Josephina  as  in  the  Grecian  Urn 
for  me. 

There  seems  no  other  pleasure  in  life  for  her. 
The  limit  of  her  literary  pursuit  is  the  reading  of  a 
four-page   Finnish  newspaper  full   of  obituaries. 
The  opalescent  enchantments  of  her  inner  being 
mean  nothing  to  her:  she  wouldn't  know  her  entity 
from  her  duodenum. 

Her  body  can  bring  her  no  delight:  there's  no  light- 
ness to  it,  no  tang,  no  feminine  charm,  no  conscious- 
ness to  make  her  love  it  as  the  Dianas  love  theirs. 
A  sunset  above  the  western  peaks  is  less  than  a 
setting  sun  to  her. 


A  white  liner  201 

Her  food  is  merely  her  fodder. 

Love  and  Romance  pass  her  by.    She  and  the  hus- 
band vie  with  each  other  for  solitary  possession  of 
their  little  nasty  house.    And  her  personality  is  not 
conducive  to  lovers. 
She  has  nor  chick  nor  child  to  mother. 
Her  idea  of  a  hfe  beyond  this  vale  is  crude  and  un- 
comfortable.   She  went  two  Sundays  to  the  Finnish 
church  and  had  a  surprising  lusty  doctrine  of  eternal 
fire  rammed  down  her  throat:    she  took  the  Finn 
minister's  word  for  it  and  quitted  the  fold,  preferring 
to  live  this  life  unhampered  by  flaming  anticipation. 
All  her  material  treasure  she  works  for  with  mops  and 
scrubbing-brushes  at  thirty-five  cents  an  hour. 
Other  roads  being  thus  blocked  it  is  sing-ho  for  King 
Alcohol  in  pint  bottles. 

Josephina  is  what  is  called  a  white  liner.  Which 
means  that  she  has  drunk  so  long,  so  much,  so 
regularly  that  whiskey,  rum,  gin  and  brandy  have 
no  or  negligible  effects  upon  her.  To  achieve  her 
intoxicating  aim  she  must  drink  pure  alcohol. 
By  the  same  token  I  eschew  many  a  tame  poet: 
I  must  have  John  Keats. 

What  the  poetry  of  John  Keats  does  to  me  I  know. 
What  the  distilled  waters  of  her  choice  do  to  Jose- 
phina it  pleases  me  to  imagine  while  I  watch  her 
clean  my  walls  and  floor  and  windows. 


202  A  white  liner 

She  works  strongly,  steadily,  quietly  till  I  pronounce 
the  room  clean.  Then  she  stops,  carries  the  pails 
and  other  things  downstairs  to  the  kitchen,  removes 
a  big  brass  pin  from  the  rear  of  her  dingy  skirt  which 
had  held  it  back  and  doubled  over  her  darkhng 
petticoat,  re-dons  an  antique  rain-coat  and  bad  hat, 
ties  her  clinking  silver  into  the  corner  of  a  decadent 
handkerchief,  bids  me  good-evening  with  a  grave 
blond  Finn  bow  and  goes  out  into  the  dusk.  She 
takes  her  way  through  alleys  and  short-cuts  to  the 
side  door  of  a  *FinIander'  gin-palace  in  the  Finn 
quarter  of  the  town.  And  there  she  lays  out  her 
day's  wage  in  the  pint  bottles  of  her  delight.  As 
many  pint  bottles  as  her  few  dollars  will  buy,  so 
many  she  buys.  She  ventures  her  all  in  the  name 
of  passionate  thirst  taking  no  thought  of  the  morrow. 
She  then  seeks  out  some  alley  with  a  dark  door-step 
and  there  she  does  her  drinking.  It  would  not  do  to 
go  home  with  her  alcoholic  wealth  because  the 
husband  might  be  there  who,  like  the  alphabetic 
vintner,  would  *  drink  all  himself.'  So  she  drinks 
away  in  pint-bottle-ish  peace,  sitting  alone  in  the 
gloom  of  the  alleyway  door-step,  in  her  limp  rain- 
coat and  bad  hat  and  her  stolid  Finn  self-sufficience. 
Because  I  like  Josephina  it  charms  me  to  think  of  the 
happiness  that  must  be  hers  as  she  sits  emptying 
pint  bottles  into  herself  and  the  white  strong  fire- 


A  white  liner  203 

water  begins  to  work. 

Before  having  her  drinks  she  is  unelated  and  unin- 
formed Hke  a  corpse  coldly  electrified  by  a  storage 
battery.  As  she  drinks  and  drinks  on  she  remains 
outwardly  unchanged  as  the  way  is  with  her  race — 
but  within!  The  changes  that  come  to  pass  in  the 
heavy  person  of  Josephina  as  the  white  flames  wash 
down  her  walls! 

Into  her  dull  veins  pours  a  hot  stream  like  melted 
seething  copper  and  it  heats  her  knees  till  she 
knows  she  has  knees  and  that  they  are  white  and 
very  beautiful:  and  it  heats  her  legs  and  her  back 
and  her  breasts  till  they  glow  with  the  double-glow 
of  an  Aphrodite's  in  a  reluctant  Adonis's  arms: 
it  heats  her  eyes  and  temples  and  throat  till  she 
feels  herself  a  radiant  girl:  it  heats  the  crown  of 
her  head  till  she  feels  something  like  a  brain  there: 
it  heats  her  heart  and  stomach  till  she's  filled  with  a 
gay  gust  for  life:  it  heats  her  imagination  till  she 
even  imagines  herself  in  love  with  her  hard  Finn 
husband  since  he  is  not  by  to  beat  her  and  so  dispel 
the  fancy:  it  heats  a  sense  of  humor  into  her  till  she 
laughs  suddenly  and  heartily  at  some  fugitive 
funniness  that  had  Iain  long  frozen  in  her  memory: 
it  heats  a  hundred  httle  human  carburetors  in  her 
which  send  a  wreathe  of  vapors  up  into  her  drab 
being  to  flush  it  with  misty  golds  and  thin  blues  and 


204  A  white  liner 

rosy  crimsons  till  her  dormant  involuntary  soul 
awakes — a  thing  of  old  mellowed  beauty,  it  may  be 
— and  is  wafted  on  warm  pretty  vapory  wings  far 
from  alleys,  far  from  mops  and  scrubbing-brushes, 
far  from  thirty-five  cents  an  hour,  far  from  door- 
steps— to  fair  sweet  Isles  of  the  Blest! 
Nearing  the  last  of  her  pint  bottles  she  reels  side- 
ways on  the  doorstep:  her  bad  hat  cants  forward: 
she  sprawls  about.  The  policeman  on  that  beat  to 
whom  in  that  aspect  she  is  a  figure  long  familiar 
strolls  toward  her  late  in  the  night  and  looks  at  her 
with  a  lackluster  eye.  But  Josephina  is  physically 
unaware  of  all  this  world.  Her  last  pint  bottle  is 
gamely  emptied,  her  inner  sun's  chromosphere  burns 
like  mad — but  her  body,  unable  to  cope  with  the 
virile  delectations  new-risen  within  it,  limply  gives 
way. 

A  quaint  picture,  interesting  to  dwell  on:  her  thick 
bathless  body  laid  low  in  the  darkened  alley,  with 
the  empty  pint  bottles  scattered  on  the  paving-stones 
beside  it — but  her  astral  shape,  lit  by  the  subtle 
fires  of  alcohol,  lifted  high,  high  to  remote  elysiums. 
The  policeman  calls  the  *  wagon'  and  Josephina  is 
taken  up  by  several  ungentle  hands  and  tossed  into 
it  like  a  sack  of  coal.  They  take  her  to  the  city  jail 
and  lock  her  in  a  cell.  The  next  morning  she  stands 
jaded   and    morbidly    intoxicated   before   a   police 


A  white  liner  205 

judge  who  glances  at  her  uninterestedly  for  the 
several-hundredth  time  and  says  five  days. 
The  five  days  can  not  be  pleasant  days  but  Josephina 
owns  a  robust  sporting  spirit.  She  gives  not  so  much 
as  the  shrug  of  a  shoulder  either  at  going  into  jail 
or  coming  out  of  it.  A  black  eye  from  her  husband, 
a  broken  arm  from  a  drunken  fall,  a  filthy  sojourn 
in  jail:  all  one  to  her.  She  accepts  them  as  she 
accepts  all  of  her  life,  with  an  immense  psychic 
calm.  But  she  takes  strongly  to  drink  to  translate 
herself  out  if  it.  And  let  her  drink. 
I  know  how  she  feels  for  I  take  to  John  Keats. 
I  don't  myself  care  much  for  strong  drink.  I  drink 
a  little  of  it  at  irregular  intervals,  but,  by  and  large, 
I  drink  without  eclat.  In  this  mountain  altitude 
whiskey  makes  me  sick,  champagne  makes  me  dizzy 
and  gin  is  a  pungent  punishment.  One  morning 
after  reading  of  Josephina's  white-hne  distinction 
in  a  police-court  column  I  tasted  some  alcohol,  but 
it  had  a  varnish  flavor  and  had  strangling  eff'ects  on 
my  throat.  It  made  me  marvel  at  Josephina's 
prowess.  I  like  absinthe  in  its  bitter  strength  mostly 
because  to  sit  sipping  it  feels  restfully  forbidden. 
Port  wine  is  a  brackish  medicine,  I  hate  the  stickiness 
of  cordials,  and  a  cocktail  I  like  chiefly  to  contem- 
plate. So  much  for  me  and  strong  drink. 
Josephina  on  the  other  hand  does  not  care  for  John 


206 


A  white  liner 


Keats.    I  sounded  her  on  poetry  in  some  of  its  human 
aspects:   there  was  nobody  at  home.    Her  own  en- 
lightened north  country  has  some  poets  of  borealic 
iron  and  brain-brawn  and  beauty:    to  Josephina's 
wooden  intellect  their  books  are  eternally  closed. 
But  the  Demon  Rum  looses  a  heated  flood  of  poetry 
upon  her,  which  I  can  but  vision  and  not  feel. 
I  am  incapable  of  strong  drink  even  as  Josephina 
is  incapable  of  John  Keats. 
We  are  quits  there. 

I  look  on  myself  as  the  more  fortunate. — ^John  Keats! 
A  woman  so  drunk  as  to  fall  and  reel  about  is  always 
an  exquisitely  shameful  thing.  And  when  I  think  of 
how  she's  tossed  into  the  wagon — to  mention  but 
one  item — 

But  it's  a  matter  of  the  human  equation.  Doubtless 
it  is  all  relative.  The  Finn  woman  is  not  aware  of 
how  she  is  knocked  about,  and  if  she  were  she  would 
not  regard  it  with  any  of  my  imagination.  So  what 
matter? 

A  likeable  and  admirable  person  is  Josephina. 
A  so  strong  fine  businesslike  worker,  a  so  thorough- 
bred sport,  a  so  splendid  drunkard,  and  asking  no 
odds  of  God  or  man.  In  her  stolid  Finn  fashion  she 
likes  me  as  she  has  proven,  and  I  like  her  though 
she  makes  me  feel  inferior. 
— if  Josephina   could   and  would  write  her  inner 


A  white  liner  207 

isolated  world  of  thoughts — the  saga  of  her  one 
horrid  gown!  There  would  be  a  book.  All  blacks 
and  carmines — all  stolidly  sober  and  brilliantly 
drunk — ^all  dingily  bathless :  deeply  savagely  quietly 
human. 

It  would  be  a  book  savoring  not  of  white  alcohol 
but  of  the  salty  unshed  Tears,  the  dry  artistic 
Griefs  of  Josephina. 


2o8  Beneficent  bedlam 


To-morrow 

I  HAVE  been  so  long  Sane  it  would  be  gay  and 
sweet  and  resting  to  go  Mad. 
I  would  I  could  go  Mad. 
To  a  Mad- woman  a  Door  is  not  a  Door,  probably: 
a  Cat  is  not  a  Cat,  belike:  and  To-morrow  is  not 
To-morrow  at  all — it  may  be  week-before-Iast,  it 
may  be  next  year,  it  may  be  an  exquisite  jest.  One 
can  not  tell  what  it  is. 

It  is  the  thing  one  escapes  by  going  Mad:  Monotony. 
It*s  all  beneficent  bedlam. 


A  deathly  pathos  209 


To-morrow 

I  LOVE  the  sex-passion  which  is  in  this  witching 
Body  of  me.     I  love  to  feel  its  portent  grow 
and  creep  over  me,  like  a  climbing  vine   of 
tiny  red  roses,  in  the  occasional  dusks. 
It  is  no  shame  or  shadow  or  sordidness:  but  beauty 
and  sweetness  and  light, 
no  token  of  sin:  a  token  of  virtue, 
no  thing  to  crush:   rather  to  nurture,  to  garner, 
no  thing  to  forget:  to  remember,  to  think  about, 
no  flat  weak  drawn-out  prose:   live  potent  clipped 
heated  poetry. 

not  common  and  loosely  human:  rare  and  divine, 
not  fat  daily  soup:  stinging  wine  of  life, 
not  valueless  because  born  of  nothing  and  nowhere: 
valuable,  priceless,  a  treasure  under  lock  and  key. 
Sex-desire  comes  wandering  in  dusk-time  and  gulfs 
me  as  in  a  swift  violent  sweet-smelling  whirlwind. 
It  goes  away  sudden-variant  as  it  came,  out  of  a 
region  of  hot  quick  shadows. 

And  for  that,  for  hours  and  days  afterward,  oranges 
and  apples  look  brighter-colored  to  my  eyes:  ham- 
mocks swing  easier  as  I  sit  in  them:  rugs  feel  softer 
to  my  feet:  the  black  dresses  lend  themselves  gentler 
to  my  form:  pencils  slide  faciler  on  paper:  my  voice 
speaks   less   difficultly   into   telephones:    meanings 


210  A  deathly  pathos 

sound  super- vibrant  in  Keats's  Odes:  sugar — little 
pinches  of  granulated  sugar — are  shaper,  sweeter- 
sweeter  in  my  throat. 

And  God  grows  less  remote.  And  my  wooden  coffin 
and  deep  wet  yellow  clay  grave  move  a  long  way 
back  from  me. 

— all  from  fleeting  ungratified  wish  of  sly  sex- 
tissues — 

Also  in  it,  and  in  my  life  from  it,  I  sense  some  deathly 
pathos. 


The  necklace 


211 


To-morrow 

THE  Necklace  which  God  long  ago  hung 
round  the  white  neck  of  my  Soul  is  com- 
posed of  little-seeming  curses,  like  precious 
and  semi-precious  gems.  They  are  polished  smooth 
as  if  by  age,  as  if  by  wear,  as  if  by  fingering  and  as  if 
by  brisk  industrious  rubbing. 

The  Necklace  is  at  once  beautiful  and  ugly.  The 
gems  are  in  color  chiefly  blues  and  greens — with 
grays,  lavenders,  drabs  and  mauves.  But  mostly 
blues  and  greens.  They  make  a  circlet  of  small 
stones  strung  at  short  intervals  as  if  on  a  strong 
thin  gold  wire,  with  two  large  tawdry  pretty  pen- 
dants hung  in  front.  One  of  the  pendants  is  my 
fertile  phase  of  Weakness  and  the  other  my  odd 
encompassing  Folly.  The  smaller  stones  are  seven- 
teen in  number  and  their  names  and  natures  are 
these: 

the  first  is  Dishonesty  which  makes  ghosts  of  half 
my  life. 

the  second  is  Pretense,  hard  and  genuine  stone, 
which  keeps  me  from  being  all-ways  sincere  even  to 
anyone  who  knows  me  and  whom  I  know:  who  loves 
me  and  whom  I  love. 

the  third  is  Fear  which  makes  me  who  scorn  all 
leonine  dangers  cringe  and  crawl  for  Trifles  of  life 


212  The  necklace 

incredibly  little. 

the  fourth  is  Sensuality  which  burns  and  bursts 
across  my  Mind,  half-missing  my  Body, 
the  fifth  is  Anxiety,  strange  flawed  green  stone — 
by  it  I  worry,  tortured  and  wildly  wavering,  about 
the  passing  hours  of  my  life:  where  they  are  going, 
where  they  are  taking  me. 

the  sixth  is  Amativeness,  extraordinary  deep-tinted 
warm  false  gem — it  makes  me  love  someway  amor- 
ously some  person  I  meet  and  fancy:  an  intimate 
tragedy,  crucial  and  trivial. 

the  seventh  is  Fatigue  of  the  spirit  itself,  gray  sad 
stone,  meaning  terrible  sensations  of  age  in  my 
young  flesh. 

the  eighth  is  Incongruity,  the  sense  and  feeling  of  it, 
round  blue  stone — it  kills  what  might  be  art  and 
constructiveness  and  excellence  in  me. 
the  ninth  is  Acquiescence,  worn  dull  stone — it  has 
kept  me  all  the  ages  from  the  salvation  of  heated 
luminous  strife. 

the  tenth  is  Sensitiveness,  pale-toned  stone — ^by  it 
the  fingers  of  life  touch  me  too  suddenly,  too  sharply, 
too  tensely  to  do  me  the  good  they  might, 
the  eleventh  is  Doubt,  frail  opalescent  stone — ^by  it 
my  delight  in  the  sunny  Spring  wind  against  my 
cheek  is  qualified  with  dubious  surprise:  by  it  I 
half-disbelieve  in  moon  and  stars  and  in  long  country 


The  necklace  213 

roads  stretched  out  solitary,   lovely,   drenched  in 

sunset. 

the    twelfth    is    Self-consciousness,    blue-and-green 

stone — it  robs  me  of  the  cooifort  and  self-respect 

of  feeling  any  motive  in  me  to  be  un-ulterior. 

the  thirteenth  is  Introspection,  beautiful-beautiful 

blue-green  stone — it  pays  for  its  place  in  beauty 

but  by  it  I  lose  the  building,  the  substance,  the  matter 

of  living. 

the  fourteenth  is   Intensity — too  vivid  vision,  too 

vivid  taste  for  some  details  of  life — little  hot-looking 

cool-feeling  stone — by  it  I  undervalue  and  overvalue, 

dwell   upon  surfaces,   missing  the  serene  feel  and 

possession  of  precious  solidness. 

the  fifteenth  is  Isolation,  pale  purple  stone — it  makes 

me  feel  never  at  home,  never  at  ease,  never  belonging 

— a    subtle    insulation — in    this    sheltered    peopled 

world. 

the  sixteenth  is  Bewilderment,  mixed-tinted  stone — 

by  it  I  wonder  what  is  truth  with  truth  seeming  that 

moment  fluttering  soft-plumed  wings  at  my  throat. 

the  seventeenth  is — it  has  no  name — the  Feel-oJ-Me, 

bright  blue-green   stone,   lovely  and  loathesome — 

by  it  IVe  lost  my  way,  IVe  felt  all  and  only  Me  when 

I  might  have  groped  outward,  hand  and  foot,  and 

found  a  wind-swept  path  to  go  in:    I  was  always 

blurred  by  Me, 


214  The  necklace 

A  small  Necklace,  all  dull  gleams  and  unusual  tints, 
strung  finely  and  strongly  and  beautifully  on  sl\ining 
gold.  The  sweet  Soul  droops  like  a  wilted  lily  under 
even  its  slight  weight.  Strong  fine  rivets  hold  it 
firm-clasped  and  the  weight  of  the  two  charming 
imitation  pendant-stones  keep  it  gracefully  in  place. 
My  loved  and  lovely  Soul  has  worn  it  through  the 
ages:  manacle,  shackle. 

How  long  more — God  may  know  but  does  not  tell  me. 
It's  only  a  Necklace.    And  my  Soul  is  a  Soul! 
Even  under  the  frail  galling  burden  of  the  flesh  the 
Soul  of  me  to-morrow  could  tear  off  that  Necklace 
and  crumble  it  to  airless  nothing. 
It  does  not:  but  could. 


Slyly  garbling  and  cross-purposing  215 


To-morrow 

AT  rarish  intervals  comes  my  Soul  to  visit  me. 
ZJy  My  Soul  is  light  sheer  Being. 
-^  ^  My  Soul  is  hke  a  young  most  beautiful 
girl  marked  and  worn  by  long  cycles  of  time  but 
not  anyway  aged.  She  comes  dressed  in  something 
like  gray-white  de-soie  muslin  or  fine-grained  crepe 
silk,  a  loose-belted  frock  reaching  to  her  ankles. 
My  Soul  is  unmoved  by  the  world  and  the  flesh  and 
their  feeling,  as  befits  a  Soul.  She  looks  on  me  with 
a  chill  faery-ish  contempt,  as  also  befits  a  Soul. 
The  quality  of  her  contempt  is  of  weary  understand- 
ing and  is  like  a  caress. 

In  the  dusk  of  yesterday  came  my  Soul  to  visit  me — 
a  dusk  of  a  deep  beauty.  The  last  glow  of  the  sun 
lay  along  the  earth,  and  all  was  gentian  blue. 
I  leaned  against  my  window-pane  watching  it,  and 
beside  me  sat  her  Presence.  Her  Presence  makes  me 
feel  wonderfully  gifted:  it  is  mine,  this  Soul  all 
GoIden-Silk  and  Silken-GoId! 

We  talk  on  many  topics,  of  many  things :  I  in  worldly 
nervous  ignorance  and  with  a  wishfulness  to  reach 
and  compass  and  know:  the  Soul  with  poise  and 
surety  of  attitude,  a  wearied  patience  and  the  chill 
sweet  contempt. 
She  answers  me  from  her  cool  old  tranquil  view- 


2i6  Slyly  garbling  and  cross-purposing 

point,  which  is  near  me  yet  remote. 

We  talked  last  of  some  bygone  persons  I  have  been, 

some  shapes  she  wore. 

Said  the  Soul:   *  Early  in  the  sixteenth  century  you 

were  a  ragged  Russian  peasant  girl  living  in  ignorance 

and  filth  in  a  hut  by  a  swamp-edge.    You  had  parents 

both  of  whom  beat  your  body  black-and-blue  from 

your    babyhood.      And    at    eighteen    you    were    a 

coarsened  hardy  wench  tending  a  drove  of  pigs  and 

goats  on  the  sunny  steppe.     I  was  there  with  you  as 

presently  as  now — as  sentient,  as  perceptive.     But 

it  is  a  question  whether  you  or  the  little  beasts  you 

drove  were  the  more  beastly  stupid.    You  and  they 

were  equal  in  outer  quality,  equal  in  uncleanliness, 

equally  covered  with  vermin.' 

I  have  no  ghost-memory  of  that  time,  but  as  the 

Soul  told  of  it  a  nascent  feeling  came  on  me,  as  if 

some  part  of  my  Mind  felt  its  way  back  to  that. 

I  warmed  to  the  thought  of  the  Peasant  Girl.    I  was 

quiescent  to  her  filth  and  ignorance. 

Said  I:   *Was  she  brave  and  fairly  honest?* 

Said  the  Soul:  *You  were  a  ready  liar — you  lied  your 

way  out  of  many  a  beating.     But  you  were  brave 

enough.     You  faced  the  roughnesses  of  your  life 

uncringing,  and  you  died  game.' 

Said  I:  'Howdidldie?' 

Said  the  Soul:    *You  were  run  neatly  through  the 


Slyly  garbling  and  cross-purposing  217 

body  by  the  short  sword  of  a  soldier  whose  lust- 
desire  you  had  had  the  hardihood  to  refuse — and  I 
fled  away  upon  the  instant.' 

Said  I:  'I  half-knew  it — she  died  a  violent  death. 
You — were  you  glad  to  be  quit  of  her  filthy  flesh, 
her  surroundings,  her  ignorance?' 
Said  the  soul:  *GIad?  Such  things  mean  nothing 
to  me.  Your  body,  be  it  sweet  or  foul,  has  no  bear- 
ing on  my  long  journey.  Motives — motif — back  of 
your  human  acts  make  me  glad  or  sorry  at  leaving 
you.' 

Said  I:  *TeII  me  about  a  time  when  I  seemed  some- 
way fine,  humanly  fine.' 

Said  the  Soul:  *In  London,  near  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  before  and  during  the  period 
of  the  Gordon  Riots,  you  lived  in  a  way  of  peace. 
From  when  you  were  fourteen  until  you  were  twenty- 
nine  you  lived  alone  with  your  little  lame  half-sister 
whom  you  cared  for  very  devotedly,  very  tenderly.' 
My  little  half-sister —  Until  the  Soul  spoke  of  her 
there  was  no  vision,  no  image  like  her.  Then  some- 
thing of  me  remembered. 

Said  I :  'What  was  she  like?  Who  were  our  parents?' 
Said  the  Soul:  'Your  mother  died  at  your  birth, 
hers  at  her  birth.  Your  father  was  hanged  at 
Tyburn  for  forgery.  The  sister  was  pale,  large-eyed, 
long-haired,  crippled  from  a  dislocated  shoulder  and 


2i8  Slyly  garbling  and  cross-purposing 

hip.  When  you  were  twenty-five  she  was  eleven, 
a  beautiful  frail  child.  You  hved  in  two  rooms  above 
a  linen-draper's  and  you  supported  the  two  of  you 
by  weaving  and  calendering  cloths  for  the  shop- 
keeper, and  by  illuminating  missals  and  manuscripts 
when  you  could  get  that  work.  For  a  very  poor 
wage,  but  Hving  was  cheap.  All  the  time  you  took 
zealous  care  of  your  sister.  Your  heart  was  bound  up 
in  her — you  adored  her.' 

Said  I:  *I  know  that.  Tell  me  what  we  did — how 
we  lived — how  we  loved  each  other.' 
Said  the  Soul:  *In  the  summer  evenings  you  often 
walked  out  along  quiet  London  streets — the  sister 
sometimes  with  a  crutch  and  your  arm  about  her, 
sometimes  in  a  rolling  chair,  whilst  you  walked  be- 
side her  pushing  it.  Your  father  had  educated  you 
in  an  erratic  fashion.  You  had  a  deal  of  desultory 
knowledge — what  is  called  knowledge — and  you  edu- 
cated the  young  sister  in  the  same  manner.  Often 
it  was  of  the  poets — Latin,  English,  Itahan,  and  of 
histories  and  sciences  and  arts — what  odd  compre- 
hensive bits  you  knew — that  you  two  talked  as  you 
sauntered  in  the  bright  late  Enghsh  sunlight.  Or 
you  talked  of  the  Httle  details  of  your  joint  life. 
Sometimes  you  sat  together — you  holding  her  close 
in  your  arms — by  a  window  in  your  darkening  front 
room,  and  watched  the  children  at  play  in  the  com- 


Slyly  garbling  and  cross-purposing  219 

mon    opposite,    and    conversed    and    were    quietly 
happy.     You  were  maternal  and  the  child  was  a 
mature  old-fashioned  yet  childish  innocent  child.' 
My  little  sister — sweet — long  gone —    Would  that  I 
had  her  now! 

Said  I:  *TeII  me  what  we  said.' 
Said  the  Soul:  *You  said  to  her,  "Our  poverty  and 
even  our  deprivations,  dearest,  which  for  your  sake 
I  feel  deeply  would  not  matter,  not  the  least,  to  me 
if  I  could  see  you  well  and  strong."  And  the  child 
replied,  "Sweet,  just  to  rest  Hke  this  in  your  arms 
each  twilight  makes  me  rich,  rich — as  rich  as  the 
smartest  ladies  in  Piccadilly."  And  you  said,  "Rich 
reminds  me.  Darling,  we  shall  have  four  extra  shil- 
hngs — four  bright  silver  shilhngs — at  the  end  of  this 
week  from  the  book-seller.  So  what  shall  we  pur- 
chase for  a  treat?  There'll  be,  if  you  like,  prawns 
and  crumpets  for  tea,  for  days  to  come — or  if  my 
Child  prefers  oranges  or  pineapples  once — "  And 
the  child  replied  with  her  cheeks  quite  pink  at  the 
thought,  "O  Sister-love,  let  us  have  the  pines,  just 
one  day,  and  let  us  make-believe  to  be  ladies  that 
day,  and  comport  ourselves  hke  ladies,  and  take 
our  tea — all  like  ladies."  And  you  pressed  her  close 
to  your  breast — you  both  wore  caps  and  kerchiefs 
and  stuff-gowns  in  the  fashion  of  the  lower-middle 
artisan  class — and  showered  gentle  kisses  on  her 


220  Slyly  garbling  and  cross-purposing 

cheeks  and  eyelids,  and  promised  her  the  pineapples 
and  the  tea  like  ladies/ 

I  listened  to  this  with  vivid  still  pleasurCo  It  felt 
like  endearing  fulfilling  life — a  day  of  tenderness — . 
And  oddly  familiar. 

Said  I:  *What  were  we  in  the  habit  of  having  for 
our  tea — that  prawns  and  crumpets  would  make 
us  a  treat?' 

Said  the  Soul:  *Your  tea  was  chiefly  bran-bread 
and  cress  or  perhaps  lettuce,  with  a  stone  mug  of 
milk  for  the  child  when  you  could  aff'ord  it.  The 
London  of  that  day  had  no  luxuries  for  the  poor. 
And  having  had  none  you  missed  none.  But  the 
populace  lived  in  starveling  misery.  The  rabble  rose 
and  rallied  to  the  Gordon  as  it  would  have  to  any- 
one who  urged  it  to  rioting.  You  were  Protestants 
but  you  regarded  him  as  a  weakling  visionary. 
You  watched  the  rioting  in  the  streets  with  little 
fear,  but  the  linen-draper  and  all  other  shop-keepers 
kept  barred  doors.  You  two  were  venturesome  and 
were  yourselves  of  the  masses,  and  when  the  mob 
stormed  Newgate  prison  you  both  stood  watching 
with  many  other  householders  on  the  outskirts  of 
the  crowd,  in  terror  but  secretly  half  in  sympathy. 
You  were  safe  enough  from  the  rioters  who  were 
intent  on  wrecking  the  gaol  and  freeing  the  inmates. 
It  was  characteristic  of  you  as  you  were  then  to  be 


Slyly  garbling  and  cross-purposing  22 1 

out  looking  on  at  a  murderous  night  scene  with 
interest,  carefully  protecting  the  child  from  contact 
with  the  throngs.' 

Said  I:  'How  long  did  that  life  last?' 
Said  the  Soul:  *Four  years  after  that  your  sister 
changed  from  her  bare  little  bed  to  a  coffin  and  you 
went  on  alone  achingly  suffering  her  loss  for  long 
years.  You  lived  to  be  seventy,  a  thin  old  woman, 
working  latterly  as  one  of  the  night  nurses  in  a 
public  hospital.  You  lived  an  abstemious  outwardly 
self-sacrificing  fife  and  died  alone,  from  hardened 
arteries,  one  autumn  night.' 

Said  I :  *And  was  there  an  informing  beauty  for  you, 
for  you  and  for  me,  in  my  life  then?' 
Coldly  said  the  Soul:    *You  were  self -centered,  for 
all  your  self-sacrifice.     You  reckoned  it  your  duty 
to  care  for  your  sister.     It  was  also  your  irresistible 
delight.     And  after  her  death  you  took  self-satis- 
faction in  self-sacrifice:  smug — smug.    For  me  there 
was  a  laming  distortion  in  it  all.' 
Said  I:   'Tell  me  some  other  life.' 
Said  the  Soul:    'You  were  once  a  little  thief  in  the 
streets   of  a  later   London.     You   picked   pockets, 
you  stole  bits  of  food  in  Covent  Garden  market, 
you  pilfered  shop-tills,  you  systematically  worked 
the  wealthy  throngs  as  they  came  from  the  Opera 
at  midnight.     You  were  known  to  the  police  as  the 


222  Slyly  garbling  and  cross-purposing 

cleverest  child-thief  in  London.' 
It  warmed  my  vanity  to  think  of  myself  as  clever 
in  so  theatric  a  role  as  thief. 
Said  I:    'How  did  that  life  like  you?* 
Said  the  Soul,  with  a  shrug  of  her  delicate  shoulders : 
*I  had  little  to  do  with  it  and  that  in  a  negative  way. 
My  part  in  you  was  to  keep  up  your  heart  in  hungry 
hunted  days.     You  were  neither  a  good  thing  nor 
a  bad  thing:    perishingly  passive.     And  you  were 
dead  in  a  potter's  field  before  your  sixteenth  birth- 
day.' 

Said  I:  'How  did  the  little  Thief  look?' 
Said   the   Soul:     *You   were   sufficiently   ugly — an 
undersized  form,  a  gamin  face,  bastard  features.' 
Said  I:    'And  I  daresay  ignorant?' 
Said  the  Soul:   'Ignorant  of  everything  rated  useful, 
but  wise  to  the  under-sides  of  human  nature  and  in 
the    sordid    viciousness    of    London    slums.     And 
singularly  shrewd — what  is  called  philosophical.' 
Said  I:    'Pray  tell  me  another  life.' 
Said  the  Soul:  'An  earlier  time — Paris,  some  century 
before  the  Terror  saw  you  a  sHm  fille-du-pavey  a 
prostitute  of  a  low  cheap  tj'^pe,  but  with  more  brain, 
more  of  what  is  termed  character  than  you  have 
ever  possessed.     You  had  wit,  will,  esprit,  deter- 
mination.    From   having  been  at  seventeen   most 
obscenely  of  the  streets  you  were  at  thirty  a  won- 


Slyly  garbling  and  cross-purposing  223 

derfully  grand  courtesan:  no  better  in  what  are 
called  morals  but  possessed  of  very  much  inner  and 
outer  strength  and  luster.  You  were  chere-aimee  to 
men  of  brain,  men  of  importance  to  the  state, 
whose  acts  were  shaded  by  your  influence.  And 
you  achieved  unusual  wealth  chiefly  by  the  powers 
and  strategies  of  your  character.  You  lived  in  the 
extreme  of  luxury  of  that  time  and  of  your  type — 
a  delicate  luxury,  almost  high-bred.  You  were 
wanton  in  amour,  being  physically  extremely  pas- 
sionate, but  admirably  straightforward  and  strong 
in  each  matter  and  aspect  of  your  life.' 
Said  I:    *You  admired  her?' 

Said  the  Soul:  *  I  was  serene  and  vividly  alive  within 
you.  You  were  in  all  ways,  simply  and  completely, 
an  honest  woman,  and  for  the  only  time.' 
Said  I:  *How  could  she  be  honest,  since  she  lived 
by  exchanging  treasure  of  much  personal  economic 
value  for  cheap  cheapest  gold,  trash,  and  a  be- 
smirched name :  and  all  through  two  sorts  of  greed?' 
Said  the  Soul:  *You  were  honest  since  you  made  no 
pretense  of  any  kind  to  yourself.  You  took  no 
gold  that  you  did  not  logically,  humanly  or  shame- 
fully earn.  You  were  consciously  and  unconsciously 
above  all  subterfuge.  You  wrought  no  ruin  nor 
error  nor  darkness  upon  your  own  spirit  or  any 
other.     You  deceived  neither  yourself  nor  anyone 


224  Slyly  garbling  and  cross-purposing 

about  you.  The  tone  of  your  life  was  of  sun-shining 
simplicity  and  cleanness.  There  was  no  greed  in 
you.  You  saw  your  way  of  life  before  you  and  lived 
it  without  degradation,  with  a  positiveness  of 
strength.' 

It  is  as  if  my  SouFs  view  and  mine  were  infinitely 
separate  from  being  narrowly  paralleled.  The  por- 
trait was  mystically  familiar:  but  not  by  her  light. 
Said  I:  *Was  she  beautiful  to  look  at?' 
Said  the  Soul:  *You  were  beautiful  in  a  pallid  saint- 
like French  manner — an  uncertain  type  of  beauty 
which  fatigue  or  depression  turns  to  plainness. 
You  had  but  little  light  charm  of  prettiness.  But 
you  had  what  counts  for  more  than  beauty:  the 
nerve  and  verve  of  attractiveness,  the  force  and 
fascination  of  physical  being,  the  fragrance,  the  flair 
of  the  deeply-sexed  woman.  In  one  phase  you  were 
constantly  preying  and  preyed  upon,  but  with  high 
valors  of  attack  and  endurance.' 
Said  I :  *  Did  she  live  in  peace — had  she  no  times  of 
suffering?' 

Said  the  Soul:  *You  had  hours  of  violent  bitter 
suffering.  Paris  has  always  accepted  without  coun- 
tenancing the  properous  cocotte.  And  often  you 
were  infamously  insulted  at  street-crossings  by 
soldiers  and  sergeants-de-ville  as  you  drove  out  in 
your  small  bright-colored  carriage.     And  you  were 


Slyly  garbling  and  cross-purposing  225 

hailed  with  opprobrious  appropriate  names  by  the 
ragged  populace  as  they  picked  up  silver  pieces 
which  you  threw  among  them.  Such  things  were 
stinging  brands  and  lashes  to  you.  But  you  bore 
yourself  with  entire  courage.  You  gave  much  money 
to  churches  and  charities  but  looked  on  such  acts 
in  yourself  rightly  as  some  slight  weakness  which 
would,  however,  be  of  benefit  to  the  starving  poor. 
I  can  not  describe — so  you  could  grasp  it — the  peace, 
the  expansion,  the  freedom  for  me  in  that  life  and 
in  that  attitude.' 

The  exact  outlook  of  the  Soul  throws  over  me  a 
veil  of  wistfulness,  bewilderness,  freedness,  lostness 
which  hides  the  material  moorings  of  my  life  and 
casts  me  adrift  on  broad  clouded  seas. 
Said  I :  *  What  was  the  end  of  that — how  did  she  die?' 
Said  the  Soul:  *You  died  exquisitely,  of  syphilitic 
disorders.  You  were  something  past  forty,  badly 
broken — your  looks  were  gone,  your  friends  were 
gone,  your  money  was  not  gone  but  it  was  of  little 
use  to  you.  But  you  smiled  serenely  and  lived  up 
personally  and  mentally  to  your  smile.  A  surgeon 
and  a  fat  mustached  old  woman  saw  you  die  in  the 
beginning  of  that  bodily  rot — ^the  just  portion  of 
the  passionate  whore — one  sweet  Spring  dawn,  with 
birds  twittering  in  green  branches  outside  your 
window  and  a  great  gold  sun  slowly  breaking  the 


226  Slyly  garbling  and  cross-purposing 

mist.  Then  for  once  I  left  you  with  reluctance.  I 
clung  to  you.  The  kiss  of  me  was  last  on  your 
fainting  brain  and  your  fast-cooling  heart.  For  I  was 
leaving,  in  an  agony  of  my  own,  an  honest  person. 
And  I  knew  not  what  might  be  my  next  petty 
prison.' 

Said  I:  *What  was  my  next  life?' 
Said  the  Soul:  *It  was  not  so  petty  as  were  some 
others.  You  were  next — about  seventeen-fifty — a 
quaint  extremely  common  little  person.  You  were 
apprenticed  as  a  child  to  a  milliner  in  Liverpool, 
England.  You  grew  out  of  that  and  became  a 
dancer  in  a  dingy  theatre — a  cheap  bedraggled  life. 
You  were  a  cheap  and  bedraggled  young  woman. 
You  wore  odd  gay  tawdry  frocks,  hideous  little  shoes, 
ragged  raveled  silk  hose,  surprising  bright  bonnets. 
Your  mind  was  a  shallow  pool  filled  with  tales  from 
shilling  shockers  and  penny  dreadfuls  in  which  you 
believed  implicitly.  You  were  mentally  degenerate, 
organically  a  fool,  a  wonderful  snob.  You  wanted 
only  wealth  and  place  bitterly  to  deride  and  browbeat 
the  low  class  to  which  you  belonged — not  from  lack 
of  heart  but  because  you  believed  it  to  be  the 
proper  aristocratic  manner.  And  what  you  wanted 
in  mind  you  made  up  in  temper.  You  quarreled, 
you  came  to  blows,  with  your  fellow-dancers  in  any 
of  a  half-score  of  small  selfish  daily  disputes.    Clever- 


Slyly  garbling  and  cross-purposing  227 

ness  among  you  consisted  in  gaining  any  possible  ad- 
vantage over  the  others  and  in  calhng  each  other 
names.  Also  in  maneuvering  bits  of  money — as 
much  as  might  be — from  unpleasing  men  who  hung 
about  the  dingy  play-house.  On  holidays  you  were 
invariably  half-drunk.' 
Said  I:  *And  wherein  was  she  not  petty?' 
Said  the  Soul:  *You  believed  in  yourself.  You  had 
not  a  doubt  you  belonged  in  worldly  high  places  but 
were  kept  down  by  the  malice  and  depravity  of 
human  nature,  people  about  you.  And  you  lived 
up  to  your  vulgar  ideal  of  ambition.  There  was  a 
simplicity,  an  enlightening  pathos  in  you  then 
which  was  lacking  in  the  linen-draper's  lodger.' 
In  my  flawed  way  I  saw  that,  but  objected  to  the 
bygone  Liverpool  lady  from  many  an  angle. 
Said  I :  *  Had  I  no  life  of  a  sweetness  and  gentleness 
and  with  it  something  that  buoyed  and  bore  you  on?' 
Said  the  Soul:  *  Never  once.  You  were  many 
centuries  ago  a  Greek  girl  of  the  aristocratic  class, 
bred  in  an  intellectual  life.  You  read  the  philosphers 
in  the  cool  retreats  of  an  olive  grove.  The  mental 
knowledge  you  have  now  compared  to  your  learning 
then  is  a  tangle  of  ignorance.  But  the  Greek  girl 
had  no  heart,  no  human  flame,  no  active  blood  of 
personality.  Those  wanting  I  starved.  The  Liver- 
pool dancer  in  her  warming  virile  vulgarness  bore 


228  Slyly  garbling  and  cross-purposing 

me  vastly  farther  on  my  way.    You  were  a  Greek 

woman   in   a   still   earlier   time — of  a   type   which 

murders  all  simplicity.     Your  body  and  mind  were 

haunted  by  perfervid  imagination  and  both  ached 

with  the  weight  of  it.     You  were  made  of  twisted 

fires.     I  grew  in  that  day:   grew  burdenedly:    grew 

distortedly.' 

Always  those  Greek  visions  are  my  *half-familiar 

ghosts.' — 

Said  1:  *Was  I  sometime  a  married  woman?' 

Said  the  Soul:    *You  were — in  four  separate  ages. 

Which  brought  you  and  me  singular  solitude.' 

Said  I:  *Was  I  always  woman?' 

Said  the  Soul :   *  You  were  once  a  young  lad  of  fierce 

temper  and  were  at  twenty  a  madman.    And  died 

mad.     No  male  body  and  brain  could  withstand 

and  outface  merely  the  emotional  besiegings  of  you.' 

Said  I:  *When  I  went  mad,  what  of  you?' 

Said  the  Soul:   *I  fell  asleep,  and  knew  no  rest,  but 

dreamed. ' 

Said  I:  *  Of  what?' 

Said  the  Soul:    *  Things  I  always  dreamed  in  your 

mad  lapses — poetry  served  very  conscious  and  very 

hot:  the  material  Color  of  the  Sunshine:  the  musical 

Softness  of  the  Dawns:    the  pulsing  Thoughts  in 

Girls'  Throats:  the  Scent  of  Water- Falls.' 

The  Soul  has  an  airless  voice  which  tells  her  mean- 


Slyly  garbling  and  cross-purposing  229 

ings,  beside  her  words  and  in  their  rhythm. 
Said  I;    *What  do  you,  and  how  do  you,  with  me 
now?' 

Said  the  Soul :  *  I  grow  tired  with  you.  Exasperated. 
Desperate.  As  if  I  too  wore  flesh.  You  are  a  deathly 
prison,  a  torture  chamber.  I  turn  everywhere  and 
nowhere  at  all.  You  tire  me — you  wear  me.  I  wait. 
I  stay.    Yet  I  move.' 

She  looked  lovely,  my  Soul — and  quite  in  and  of  this 
bitter-ish  lovely  world  in  its  bloody  bitter  wrappings 
of  bone  and  flesh.  Around  her  neck  was  the  Neck- 
lace she  wore  in  all  the  ages,  showing  greenish  in  a 
dusk  of  gentian  blue. — 

All  of  it  slyly  garbles  and  cross-purposes  me  a  little 
bit  more  than  usual. 
I  wish  I'd  been  born  a  Wild  Boar. 


230  Not  quite  voila-tout 


^ 


To-morrow 

THE  clearest  lights  on  persons  are  small 
salient  personal  facts  and  items  about 
them  and  their  ways  of  life. 
To  know  that  a  woman  is  *  sensitive'  is  to  have  but 
a  blurred  conception  of  her  as  one  easily  impressed, 
easily  hurt.  But  to  know  that  she  wears  thick 
union-suitish  under-clothes  and  uncompromising 
cotton  stockings  is  to  know  much  about  her:  by 
those  tokens  she  is  plain :  she  is  stupid :  she  is  smugly 
virtuous:  she  is  poor:  she  is  narrow-thoughted: 
she  lacks  imagination:  she  is  prosaic:  she  has  a 
defective  sense  of  humor:  she  is  catty:  she  is  *kind*: 
she  catches  cold:  she  is  a  thoroughly  good  woman. 
To  know  that  a  child  is  'bright'  is  to  have  no  definite 
knowledge  of  the  child.  But  to  know  she  flies  into 
rages  and  bites  whisk-brooms,  laces  and  her  fragile 
grandmother  is  to  have  a  wide-beamed  far-reaching 
spirit-light  upon  her. 

That  I  am  *  thoughtful'  means  little  or  anything  or 
nothing:  that  I  love  the  odor  of  ink,  that  I  hate  the 
stings  of  conscience,  that  I  never  lounge  untidily 
about  the  house  or  in  my  room  but  am  always 
*  groomed,' — those  tell  me  to  myself. 
Here  for  my  enlightening  I  write  a  garbled  list  of  my 
items  and  facts: 


Not  quite  voila-tout  23 1 

— I  never  see  a  soft  new  yeast-cake  without  wishing 
to  squeeze  it  for  the  salubrious  feeling  of  the  tinfoil 
bursting  facilely  and  the  yeast  oozing  with  its  odd 
dry  juiciness  through  my  fingers. 
— And  I  never  see  a  shiny  waxy  green  rubber  plant 
without  wanting  to  bite  the  leaves  precisely  and  dain- 
tily with  my  sharp  teeth. 

— My  luncheon  each  late  midday  is  made  of  four 
radishes,  three  crackers  and  a  thin  glass  of  water: 
an  anchoretic  feast  which  I  eat  with  relish.  The 
rhyme  I  murmur  with  it  is:  *what  do  you  think, 
she  lives  upon  nothing  but  victuals  and  drink.' 
— ^Whenever  I  look  out  my  w^indow  at  five  in  the 
afternoon  I  see  a  neat  nice-looking  strange  nigger- 
woman  walking  past.  And  the  nigger-woman  glances 
casually  up  at  my  window  and  sees  me.  We  are 
unknown  to  one  another  and  have  belike  as  much 
and  no  more  in  common  as  if  we  grew  on  different 
planets.  But  the  nigger-woman  and  I  are  someway 
dimly  liking  each  other  and  dimly  knowing  it. 
— I  scent  my  belongings  faintly  with  Houbigant's 
Quelques  Violettes  perfume. 

— I  like  to  hght  a  box  of  matches  at  a  twilight 
window-sill  singly  and  by  twos  and  threes  and  Httle 
bunches,  and  hold  them  till  they  burn  out,  and  watch 
the  little  flames,  and  drop  the  burnt  ends  out  the 
window:  a  pastime  inherited  from  my  child-self. 


232  Not  quite  voila-tout 

— Of  living  creatures  that  I  know  I  most  hate  cock- 
roaches. 

— Of  inanimate  things  that  I  know  I  most  hate  a 
loose  shutter  rattling  at  night  in  the  wind. 
— While  I  smoke  after-dinner  cigarettes  down-stairs 
I  put  flat  round  black  records  on  a  tall  red  Edison 
phonograph  and  I  curl  up  in  a  leather  chair  in  the 
dark  to  Hsten  to  the  music  which  is  soft  and  deep: 
*Che  Gelida  Manina'  in  a  wistful  tenor,  and 
*  Refrain  Audacious  Tar,'  and  *Ah  Quel  Giorno,' 
and  *  Scenes  That  are  Brightest'  and  others  and 
others — tantalizing,  tawdry,  artistic,  cheaply  pleas- 
ant, luring,  whatnot.  And  by  turns  it  makes  me 
lighthearted,  lightheaded,  emotional,  romantic,  rest- 
less, evilly  coarse.  It  is  piquant  debauchery.  Music 
sweetly  poisons  me. 

— My  bureau-drawers  I  keep  neatly  in  order — 
lingerie  and  other  articles  arranged  convenient  to 
my  hand  in  white  rows  and  fragrant  tidy  piles: 
with  the  exception  of  the  upper  left-hand  drawer 
which  is  a  bit  of  terrific  snarled  chaos.  In  it  is  an 
inky  handkerchief  of  an  old  vintage :  in  it  are  several 
un-mated  crumpled  gloves:  in  it  are  some  olive-pits: 
in  it  is  an  empty  sticky  hquid  cold-cream  bottle 
with  tufts  of  eider-down  power-puff  stuck  to  it: 
in  it  is  a  tangle  of  smudged  ribbons:  in  it  are  two 
pieces  of  pink  rock-candy:  in  it  is  a  spent  yellow- 


Not  quite  voila-tout  233 

silk  garter:  in  it  is  a  torn  sponge:  in  it  are  blackened 
pieces  of  chamois-skin:  in  it  is  a  broken  scissors: 
in  it  are  three  twisted  ragged  black-net  veils:  in  it 
is  a  brass  curtain  ring:  in  it  is  a  broken  scattered 
string  of  coral  beads:  in  it  is  a  lump  of  wax:  in  it 
is  a  piece  of  knotted  twine :  in  it  are  little  bunches  of 
cotton- wool :  in  it  is  a  spilled  box  of  powder  whitening 
everything:  in  it  is  a  spilled  box  of  matches:  in  it 
is  a  jet  bracelet  broken  into  small  pieces:  in  it  is  a 
broken  hand-mirror:  in  it  are  some  crushed  ciga- 
rettes: in  it  is  a  ruined  blue  plume:  in  it  is  a  warped 
leather  purse :  in  it  is  a  damaged  lump  of  red  finger- 
nail paste:  in  it  is  a  stick  of  gum  arabic:  in  it  is  a 
bisque  kewpie  defiled  by  wax,  ink,  paste,  powder 
and  rock-candy :  in  it  are  some  partly  melted  vestas : 
in  it  are  other  bits  of  rubbish :  all  in  wildest  disorder. 
Why  I  do  not  empty  the  drawer  and  burn  the  rubbish 
I  don't  at  all  know. 

— I  sometimes  take  one  or  two  of  the  neighborhood 
children  to  a  picture-show. 

— Sometimes  as  I  lean  at  my  window  I  alternate 
looking  at  the  distant  deeply-blue  mountains  by 
looking  at  the  near-by  women  who  chance  to  pass  on 
the  stone  pavement  below — the  smartly-clad  and 
lighthearted-seeming  ones.  I  look  at  their  good 
shoulders  in  pastel-toned  silk  and  at  their  trim  silk 
ankles  and  proud  flaring  skirts  and  insolent  beautiful 


234  ^^^  quite  voila-tout 

hats — the  buoyant  worldly  insouciance  of  their 
ensembles — as  their  owners  walk  along  on  happy 
errands.  As  I  look  I  feel  Me  to  be  behind  prison 
bars  looking  out  in  thin  psychic  jealousy:  regret  for 
a  time  when  I  also  went  thus  buoyantly  on  happy 
worldly  errands  and  an  odd  raging  silent  impatience 
for  a  time  when  I  may  again.  But  with  it  too  the 
wavering  acquiescence  in  this  analytic-writing  mood. 
— *  pussy-cat-mieow, '  I  ruminate,  *  can't  have  any 
milk  until  her  best  petticoat's  mended  with  silk.' 
— One  kind  of  man  I  impatiently  scorn  is  the  kind 
that  looks  bored  if  I  mention  Ibsen  or  ceramics  or 
Aztec  civilization  but  is  interested  instantly,  alertly 
if  I  mention  tny  garters.  Equally  I  abhor  the  type 
that  begrudges  me  my  own  private  phases  of 
amorousness:  not  those  who  condemn  me  for  them: 
not  those  who  disHke  them  in  me:  not  those  who 
deplore  them:  but  who  begrudge  me  them. 
— ^Always  I  come  up  a  stairway  softly.  Always  I 
close  doors  softly.  I  make  no  noise. 
— ^The  quaintest  character  I  have  met  with  in  fiction 
is  Huckleberry  Finn's  father,  looked  at  as  a  father. 
Next  in  quaintness  I  place  Sally  Brass,  regarded  as  a 
human  being. 

— I  like  a  glass  of  very  hot  water  and  a  dish  of 
preserved  damson  plums  on  a  sultry  August  day: 
and  another  of  each  on  top  of  that:   and  another 


Not  quite  voila-tout  235 

of  each  on  top  of  that. 

— I  like  the  word  addle:  I  hate  the  word  redress. 
I  would  fain  have  my  *  wrongs'  ever  addled  than 
redressed:  merely  for  the  word  prejudice. 
— I  would  rather  that  almost  any  physical  disaster 
should  befall  me  than  that  I  ever  achieve  an  *  ab- 
domen.' When  an  abdomen  comes  in  at  the  door 
life's  romances  fly  fast  out  the  windows:  so  it  looks 
to  me.  May  death  overtake  me  haply  before  the 
menopause. 

— ^The  pictures  I  have  crowded  on  a  small  side-wall 
space  two  feet  from  my  eyes  as  I  sit  at  my  desk  are: 
Theda  Bara  as  Carmen:  the  late  Queen  Isabella  of 
Spain:  Marie  Lloyd,  loved  of  the  London  populace: 
a  velvety-looking  black-and-orange  print  of  a 
leopard:  Blanche  Sweet,  loveliest  of  film  actors: 
John  Keats,  a  small  old  print:  Ethel  Barry  more, 
a  pencil  drawing  made  by  herself:  Nell  Gwyn,  a 
photograph  of  a  Leiy  portrait:  Watts's  'Hope': 
Stanley  Ketchel,  dead  middle-weight  fighter:  *Jane 
Eyre'  by  a  Polish  artist:  Fanny  Brawn,  the  solitary 
extant  silhouette  print:  Ty  Cobb:  two  children: 
Charlotte  Corday  in  the  Prison  de  I'Abbaye:  Susan 
B.  Anthony:  a  Chinese  lady:  Andrea  del  Sarto: 
Queen  Boadicea:  and  Christy  Mathewson. 
— I  am  old-fashioned  in  many  of  my  tastes — in  all 
my  reading  and  writing  tastes.    I  do  not  like  type- 


236  Not  quite  voila-tout 

writers:  they  make  fingertips  callous  in  a  poor  cause. 
And  I  do  not  like  fountain-pens  which  someway  seem 
suitable  only  for  business-letters,  forgeries,  book- 
keeping and  crude  cursory  love-letters.  I  like  a 
steel  pen  in  a  fat  glossy  green  enameled  wood  pen- 
holder with  a  thick  pleasant-feeling  rubber  sheath 
at  the  lower  end. 

— I  wear  to-day  a  modest  frock  of  black  silk: 
beneath  it  a  light  silk  petticoat:  beneath  that  a 
white  pussy-willow  silk  *  envelope'  and  a  pale 
narrow  pink  silk  shirt  chastened  by  many  launder- 
ings:  no  stays:  thick  white  silk  stockings  gartered 
above  my  knees  by  circles  of  mild  mauve  elastic: 
on  my  feet  cross-ribboned  bright-buckled  black 
shoes:  round  my  neck  a  jet  necklace: — all  of  it  a 
costume  that  might  be  of  a  conventional  woman, 
a  plain-living  woman,  a  good  woman,  a  well-bred 
woman — saving  only  that  beneath  my  left  shoulder- 
blade  the  smooth  new  pussy-willow  silk  has  a  jagged 
two-inch  rent  where  it  caught  on  a  drawer-handle: 
and  the  rent — in  lieu  of  neatly  mending  it  with  the 
thread  and  needle  of  woman's  custom — I  caught 
up  any  way  by  its  jagged  edges  and  tied  tight  in  a 
hard  vicious  heathen  knot:  the  note  of  spiritual 
fornication,  of  Mary-Mac-Laneness :  always  there's 
some  involuntary  pagan  touch  to  undo  me,  to  arraign 
me,  to  betray  me  to  God  and  to  myself. 


Not  quite  voila-tout  237 

— I  wear  five-and-a-half  A-Iast  shoes:  number 
twenty-one  snug  whalebone  stays:  and  weigh  a 
hundred-twenty-four  pounds. 

— I  am  fond  of  green  peas,  baseball  and  diamond 
rings. 

— I  like  violently  to  spoil  a  little  charlotte-russe  with 
a  fork:  it  gives  me  the  same  feeling  of  lawless  sweet- 
fiery  lust  which  must  belong  to  a  Moslem  soldier 
when  deflowering  a  Christian  virgin:  and  harms 
nobody. 

— Sometimes  when  Tm  dressing  in  the  morning  I 
glance  down  through  my  window  and  see  two 
elderly  Butte  business  men,  one  a  lawyer  and  one 
a  banker,  going  by  on  the  way  to  their  offices. 
And  I  wonder  at  how  frightfully  respectable  they 
look  in  their  tailored  clothes  and  reproachless  gloves 
and  perfectly  celestial-looking  hats.  I  murmur: 
*  Robin  and  Richard  were  two  pretty  men  who  lay 
in  bed  till  the  clock  struck  ten.' 
I  keep  on  my  desk  a  little  doll  with  fluffy  skirts, 
blue  eyes,  pouting  lips  and  curly  hair  and  named 
Little  Jane  Lee  after  an  adorable  child  I  have  seen 
in  moving  pictures. 

— I  am  five  feet  six  inches  tall  in  my  highish  heels: 
— I  wear  number  six  gloves:  the  calf  of  my  leg  is  a 
shapely  thing. 
— The  six  extant  Americans   I   most  admire  are 


238  Not  quite  voila-tout 

Thomas  A.  Edison,  Harriet  Monroe,  Gertrude  Ath- 

erton,  Theodore  Roosevelt,  the  remaining  Wright 

Brother,  and  Amy  Lowell. 

— I  think  Yd  learn  to  be  a  cook,  a  professional  cook, 

if  I  were  less  easily  fatigued. 

— I  love  the  sound  of  the  cHnking  of  two  clean  new 

white  clay  pipes,  one  upon  the  other. 

— I  crack  nuts  with  my  teeth. 

Voila! 

But  not  quite  voila-tout. 


A  damned  spider  239 


To-morrow 

TO-DAY  was  one  of  the  To-morrows  of  en- 
compassing dissatisfaction  when  this  seems 
all  a  nasty  world  and  a  nasty  life. 
A  Spider  drowned  in  my  bath-tub  this  morning. 
It  was  one  of  those  long-legged  spiders.  It  was  in 
the  tub  when  I  went  there — a  small  ovalish  dark- 
gray  pellet  v/ith  seven  ray-like  legs  as  of  an  evil 
little  sun  lying  flat  on  a  white  desert.  It  feels 
inconceivable  that  any  creature  should  naturally 
have  an  odd  number  of  legs:  we  are  all,  including 
spiders,  laid  out  as  with  rule  and  compass.  Perhaps 
it  is  inconceivable.  But  this  Spider  had  seven  legs. 
I  counted  them  while  I  knelt,  blue-peignoired,  beside 
the  tub  with  my  elbows  on  the  edge  and  watched 
the  Spider  and  waited  for  it  to  go  away.  Whether 
it  had  lost  a  leg,  or  had  one  too  many,  or  its  kind 
is  normally  made  like  that:  those  things  I  vexedly 
wondered  about.  In  either  case  it  seemed  a  so 
much  worse  Spider.  It  did  not  go  away  so  I  touched 
it  gently  with  an  oblong  of  green  soap.  Then  it 
moved  and  began  to  walk  up  the  side  of  the  tub. 
But  the  side  is  smooth  as  glass  and  always  it  slipped 
back.  I  went  to  my  room  and  fetched  a  post-card. 
With  a  post-card  newly  from  Delaware  I  lifted  the 
Spider  out  of  the  bath-tub.    Then  I  scaled  card  and 


240  A  damned  spider 

Spider  to  the  farthest  ceiling  corner  of  the  room. 
Then  I  drew  the  tub  one-third  full  of  tepid  water. 
And  there  floating  in  it  as  if  brought  down  by  Black 
Art  was  the  seven-legged  Spider,  drowned  and 
ruined.  It  spoiled  the  atmosphere  and  anticipa- 
tion of  my  morning  tub.  I  shuddered  miserably. 
I  pulled  out  the  rubber  plug  and  water  and  Spider 
washed  down  and  away  into  the  dark  sewer-wastes 
of  Butte,  into  the  bowels  of  the  earth,  through  the 
gateways  of  hell,  I  hope.  I  took  a  hasty  shower 
with  a  flavor  of  long-legged  Spiders  in  it.  I  dressed, 
and  combed  and  coifed  my  hair,  with  the  clouded 
thought  in  me  that  throughout  my  life  I  shall  in- 
evitably encounter  by  eternal  law  a  long-legged 
Spider  from  time  to  time.  I  know  there'll  be  no 
evading  it.  Those  who  know  statistics  doubtless 
could  tell  me  how  many  Spiders  I  shall  encounter  in 
so  many  or  so  many  years:  the  exact  percentage 
even  to  the  division  of  a  week  and  the  half  or  the 
quarter  of  a  Spider.  There  is  something  discon- 
certing and  tragic  in  the  thought. 
The  drowned  Spider's  ghost  pursued  me  all  day 
though  its  memory  faded. 

My  breakfast,  though  it  included  an  egg,  seemed 
antagonistic,  hostile  toward  me  as  I  ate  it.     It  made 
me  melancholy. 
I  watched  from  my  back  window  a  slim  boy  painting 


A  damned  spider  241 

a  porch  and  singing  in  incipient  tenor  a  rhythmic 
lullaby  beginning  *go  to  sleep  my  dus-ky  ba-by.' 
He  painted  silently  for  some  minutes  and  then 
dipped  his  brush  in  the  tin  of  paint.  Whenever 
he  left  off  painting  to  dip  the  brush  he  sang.  Once 
he  failed  to  sing  when  he  dipped  the  brush  but  in- 
stead burst  forth  with  it  in  the  midst  of  painting 
a  long  mustard  streak  on  his  porch.  Ordinarily 
that  would  not  have  mattered  to  me  since  I  am 
innately  keyed  and  pitched  to  expect  the  galvanically 
unexpected.  But  to-day  it  made  me  rackingly 
nervous. 

In  the  afternoon  I  went  for  a  walk.  Down  and 
down,  seventeen  squares  from  here,  in  a  quiet 
neighborhood  a  strange  woman  accosted  me.  She 
was  pale  and  smartly  dressed  and  quite  drunk. 
She  said,  *  Listen — can  you  remember  which  of  these 
corners  I  was  to  meet  a  friend  at?*  It  made  me 
feel  annoyed  and  bewildered  and  sad  and  silly. 
When  I  came  back  I  read  awhile — a  story  of  Guy 
de  Maupassant's  about  a  little  dog  named  Pierrot, 
whose  owner  loved  him  much  but  loved  money 
more  and  could  not  bring  herself  to  pay  a  tax  of 
eight  francs  to  make  Pierrot's  existence  legal.  So 
she  threw  him  into  a  pit.  As  heartbreaking  a  tale 
as  even  de  Maupassant  ever  wrote.  It  made  all  the 
loves  in  this  world  feel  terrify ingly  sordid.     It  made 


242  A  damned  spider 

me  unhappy. 

Then  I  found  a  poetry-book  and  read  about  the 

Blessed  Damozel  leaning  out  from  the  gold  bar  of 

heaven.     Always,  by  her  lovehness  alone,  she  stirs 

me  to  my  still  depths  of  tears.      But  to-day  the 

song  made  me  feel  over-wrought  and  life-worn. 

To-night  I  walked  out  to  a  little  desert-space  west 

of  the  town,  a  very  pale,  very  gray  desert,  with  a 

sweet  wet  mist  hke  dissolving  pearls  swathing  it. 

The  minion  placid  stars  looked  down,  remote  and 

hard,  as  if  each  one  had  newly  forsaken  me.     It 

made  me  afraid  and  cold  around  my  heart. 

Here  I  sit  and  nothing  in  all  the  world  is  pleasant 

or  reassuring. 

That  damned  Spider. 


To  wander  and  hang  and  float  about  243 


M 


To-morrow 

Y  damnedest  damningest  quality  is  Wavering 

— Wavering — 

I  might  say  I  prefer  the  dawn  to  the  twi- 
light or  the  twilight  to  the  dawn. 
Neither  would  be  true. 
I  love  the  dawn — I  love  the  twilight. 
What  I   unconsciously  prefer  is  the  long  negative 
Wavering  space-of-day  between  the  two. 
I  might  say  I  prefer  heaven  to  hell  or  hell  to  heaven. 
Neither  would  be  true. 

My  garbled  gyral  nature,  partaking  uneasily  of  both, 
prefers  to  wander  and  hang  and  float  about  between 
the  two. 

I  might  say  I  prefer  strength  to  weakness  or  weak- 
ness to  strength. 
Neither  would  be  true. 

What  I  prefer  is  a  hellish  hovering,  an  endless  tor- 
turing Tenterhook  between  the  two. 
And  that  Wavering  preference  is  against  my  will, 
against  my  reason,  against  my  judgment,  against 
my  taste  and  liking — against  my  life,  my  welfare, 
my  salvation:  against  the  clear  lights  of  my  spirit. 
I  know  I  work  intently  and  industriously  at  the 
articles  of  my  damnation  in  the  Wavering — Waver- 
ing— 


244  ^o  wander  and  hang  and  float  about 

I  know  it  would  be  better  to  die  at  once :  failing  that, 

to  live  but  to  live  positively  as  a  beggar,  a  whore, 

a  thief  or  a  milliner.     Knowing  that,  I  know  also 

I  Waver:   I  know  I  shall  prefer  to  Waver:  I  know 

I  shall  constantly  Waver. 

I     am     constant — I     am    remarkably    profoundly 

constant — in  my  Wavering. 

In  the  morning  as  I  dress  I  draw  on  a  stocking — 

a  long  black  or  white  glistening  stocking.     I  know 

I  do  it  only  because  the  mixed  big  world,  which 

refuses  to  Waver,  is  pushing — pushing  me.     I  would 

choose  if  I  could — though  loathing  my  choice — to 

stay  with  my  bare  foot  and  my  stocking  in  my  hand, 

Wavering.     Between   drawing  it  on   and  pausing 

barefoot.  Wavering.     I  prefer  not  to  draw  on  the 

stocking:    I   prefer  not  to  be  barefoot:    I   prefer 

Wavering — Wavering — 

When  I'm  hungry  I  choose:   not  to  let  food  alone: 

not  to  eat  it:  to  have  it  by  me  and  Waver,  Waver 

emptily.     Not  to  enjoy   its  anticipation:    not  to 

contemplate  it.    No — no!    To  Waver!    I  reach  and 

take  the  food  because  the  world  in  its  pushing 

pushes  me. 

If  the  world  stopped  pushing — 

One  reason  it  will  be  pleasant  to  be  dead:  I  can  then 

no  longer  Waver. 

Worms  will  eat  me  unwaveringly.     Or  they  may 


To  wander  and  hang  and  float  about  245 

then  do  the  Wavering.    But  /  shall  no  more  pause 

with  a  bare  foot  and  an  empty  stocking,  a  dish  of 

food  and  a  gnawing  midriff. 

Here  I  sit  as  yet,  alive  and  Wavering. 

The  Wavering  is  not  the  pale  cast  of  thought:  it  is 

not  my  way  of  analysis:    it  is  only  Wavering — 

Wavering — 

Wavering  is  not  among  the  blue-green  Stones  in  my 

antique  necklace:    not  by  that  name — not  as  one 

Stone. 

It  is  a  marked  and  hateful  and  hellish  gift  of  this 

present  Me  who  house  my  Soul. 

It  is  half  of  this  Mary  MacLane — who  is  I — :  and 

I  know. 

I  am  constant  alone — noticeably  tensely  constant — 

in  my  Wavering:    and  less  constant  in  Wavering 

than  in  the  ghoulish  preference. 

An  odd  and  subtle  doom. 


246  A  thousand  kisses 


To-morrow 

AMONG  my  other  gifts  I  own  also  Wanton- 
ness. In  proof  of  which  I  am  wishing  as 
^  I  sit  here  for  a  Thousand  careless  kisses: 
eleven  o'clock  of  still  evening — a  Thousand  Kisses. 
A  wonderful,  wonderful  attribute,  Wantonness :  rich, 
rich  luster  in  the  conscious  temperament  which  owns 
it,  a  Gift-thing  delicate  and  gorgeous. 
By  it  I  want  a  Thousand  Kisses :  a  Thousand — made 
all  of  Wantonness. 

Kisses  come  in  differing  kinds  and  only  one  is 
Wanton. 

The  kiss  of  a  lover  has  an  intense  cosmic  use:  the 
kiss  of  a  mother  is  tender  fostering  food:  the  kiss 
of  a  friend  is  vantage  and  grace  of  friendliness:  the 
kiss  of  a  child  is  cool  charm  of  snowflakes  and  green 
springtime  leaves. 

And  the  kiss  of  Wantonness  is  not  of  use,  nor  of 
food,  nor  of  gracing  vantage,  nor  of  childhood 
charm — but  is  restless  essence  of  humanness  and 
worldliness  and  mere  sheer  limitless  encompassing 
liking:  born  of  sweet  lips,  alien  it  might  be,  and 
secretly  *unattuned,'  but  warm  and  fond  and 
present:  answering  the  pathos  of  infinite  jejuneness 
which  flows,  flows  always  in  red  human  blood. 
Through  the  race  rides  a  long  dread  wistfulness, 


A  thousand  kisses  247 

made  of  tears  and  lies  and  the  barbaric  distress  and 
pitfall  of  everyday 's  journey:  a  crying  wish  for  a 
cup  of  warmed  drugged  sweet  ease  to  turn  it  all  a 
moment  away:  but  a  moment  away. 
And  through  all  the  race  is  the  measureless  poetry, 
purling  and  manthng  in  its  bowl  of  flesh.     Each 
human  one  is  made  of  the  sun,  and  made  of  the 
moon,  and  made  of  the  four  winds  and  the  seas  and 
the  last  pink  sea-foam  on  the  crests  of  the  twilit 
waves:  and  made  of  salt  and  of  sugar  and  of  lone- 
some calling  of  loons  and  quick  song  of  skylarks: 
and  made  of  sword-edges  and  of  money  and  of  dolls 
and  toys   and   painted   glass:   and   made   of  loose 
reckless  shuffling  of  dry  autumn  leaves,  and  of  nerves 
and  of  iflusions  and  of  broken  food  and  hesitance: 
and  made  of  Mother-Goose  rhymes  and  of  cigarette- 
ashes  and  of  raveled  sflk:  and  made  of  layers  and 
layers  of  mixed-up  passionate  colors  and  of  gilded 
cakes   and   of  strawberries   and   of  temperamental 
orgasms  and  raw  silvery  onions  and  gaming  and 
dancing   and   minute-by-minute   inconsistency:   all 
veiled  in  a  thin  gold  veil — afl  in  a  thin  gold  veil. 
Betwixt  the  wistfulness  and  the  poetry — helas,  what 
chance   has   the    human    equation,    unsought,    un- 
warned, unchaflenged  of  God  to  be  straitly  equable! 
No  chance. 
Happily  no  chance. 


248  A  thousand  kisses 

Thus  I,  Mary  MacLane,  so  conscious  of  Me  and 

garbledly  gifted,  want  a  Thousand  Kisses  at  eleven 

o'clock  of  a  still  evening. 

No  spirit-hands  of  Love  are  laid  soft  on  my  drooping    | 

shoulders  in  the  passing  days:  no  Love — no  Love — 

in  all  my  life. 

No  miracle  Wonder  and  Gentleness  stirs  in  and 

against  my  Heart:  my  Heart  is  strangely  dead  of  a 

strange  Realness,  known  and  felt  but  unachieved: — 

no  Love — no  Love  in  my  life. 

And  I  can  wish  for  no  Love,  for  the  listless  Heart 

is  listlessly  dead. 

I  wish  instead,  in  hastening  present  clock-ticking 

moments,  for  a  Thousand  present- warmed  Kisses:  a 

Thousand  in  Wanton  response  to  a  Wanton  'leven- 

o'clock. 

Dominating  waving  washing  warmth  of  Wantonness, 

compassing  me  at  eleven  o'clock. 

A  Thousand  careless  insouciant  Kisses:  a  Thousand 

gorgeous  delicate  Kisses:  a  round  Thousand. 

From  what  lips — whose  lips — what  do  I  know? — : 

so  their  Kisses  are  a  Thousand. 

From  what  lips — what  do  I   care? — :  so  they  be 

eager  and  live  and  tenderly  false. 

— come  some  of  the  Thousand  glowing  on  my  pink 

lips,  and  my  white  fingers,  which  were  tense,  relax — 

— come  more  of  the  Thousand,  and  my  rigid  hard- 


A  thousand  kisses  249 

riding  thoughts  grow  drowsy  and  pliant  and  negli- 
gible. 

— come  more  of  the  Thousand,  and  my  knees  and 
the  marrow  in  my  bones  are  gently  aware  of  most 
logical  opiate  ease — 

— come  more  of  the  Thousand,  and  my  midriff  is 
full  of  cream-and-chocolate  casualness  and  my 
smooth  arms  are  washed  down  with  mists  of  custom. 
— come  more  of  the  Thousand,  and  my  seven  senses 
start  to  melt  at  the  edges — 

— come  more  of  the  Thousand,  and  the  palms  of 
my  hands  wax  merely  pleasant-feeling  and  the  soles 
of  my  feet  fatly  comfortable — 
— come  the  last  of  the  Thousand  in  a  swirling  silly 
lovely  lightly-insane  shower — and  I  feel  exactly  like 
a  woman  in  the  next  street  who  goes  forth  clad  in 
mustard-and-cerise  with  a  devilish  black-and-white 
Valeska-Suratt  parasol:  and  more — much  more — 
I  feel  the  way  she  looks — 

For  this  Wanton-thing  is  not  amour  but  psychology: 
in  it  I  am  less  the  maenad  than  the  philosopher: 
less  the  Cyprian  woman  than  the  Muse. 
I  am  a  deeply  gifted  woman. 

I  am  not  prone  on  my  green  couch,  frayed,  frazzled, 
bowed-down  in  spirit  from  a  day  of  frightful  stress 
and  cross-purpose. 
Instead,  hair-triggerishly  alive,  with  definite  desire 


I 


250  A  thousand  kisses 

beating  hotly  this  moment  in  my  throat:  the  wish 
for  Kisses — Kisses  far  removed  from  Death  and 
Graves  and  Coffins:  Kisses  of  this  present  clock- 
tickingness,  Kisses  useless,  meaningless,  sweet — oh, 
sweet! — 
— in  number,  a  Thousand:  in  kind.  Wanton. 


A  fluttering-moth  wish  251 


To-morrow 

A  WISH  that  God  would  come  personally  to 
see  me  flutters  in  my  thoughts  ever  and 
anon  like  a  restless  moth. 
I  am  in  a  prison-mood  and  coldly  content  to  be  in 
it.  For  how  long  content — content  is  not  the  word: 
despairingly  acquiescent — there's  no  word  to  express 
that — I  can  noway  tell.  But  now  I  live  and  breathe 
aloof  and  strange-mooded.  And  with  it  I  wish  God 
would  visit  me  a  moment. 

It  is  not  a  strong  wish.  Yet  restless  and  persistent. 
I  want  to  be  free  from  myself  and  away,  loosed  in 
the  little  broad  big  narrow  World:  but  first  and 
more  I  want  God  to  visit  me. 

I  want  people  again,  those  away  from  here  who  are 
my  friends — some  glowing-spirited  ones  who  ap- 
preciate my  Mind  and  cater  to  me:  I  want,  I  think, 
a  poet  to  love  me  with  some  unobvious  madness: 
but  first  and  more  I  want  God  to  visit  me. 
More  than  I  want  strength  of  spirit  and  flesh,  more 
than  I  want  a  fat  mental  peace,  more  than  I  want  to 
know  John  Keats  in  star-spaces:  more  than  I  want 
my  dream-Child:  I  want  God  to  visit  me. 
More  than  I  wish  this  appalling  tiredness  would 
leave  me:  more  than  I  wish  this  I  write  to  be  a 
realization,  a  de-Jait  portrait  of  the  thin-hidden  Me, 


252  A  fluttering-moth  wish 

my  self-expression  achieved:  more  than  I  want  to  be 
quit  of  my  two  black  dresses  and  back  in  the  wide 
sweet  frivol  of  variegated  clothes:  I  want  God  to 
visit  me. 

God  must  know  all  about  that.  He  must  have 
known  it  a  long  time.  He  still  does  not  come. 
If  he  would  come  and  tell  me  one  thing,  one  certain 
thing,  it  would  be  enough.  It  would  show  me  a 
direction  and  I  could  keep  on  in  it  by  myself.  If 
God  would  tell  me  even  a  sheerest  matter-of-fact, 
for  sure — like  What  O'CIock  by  his  time  it  really  is: 
that  would  be  a  spark  from  which  I  could  build  an 
eternal  fire  for  myself.  Forever  after  I  could  dis- 
pense with  God  as  a  personality. 
I  am  strangely  weak.  Strong  of  will,  strong  of 
mind,  but  weak  of  purpose:  damnably,  damnedly. 
I  shall  never  be  able  to  write  in  words  one  one- 
thousandth  of  the  dramatic  drastic  weakness  which 
is  in  me.  But  I  hate  weakness  with  so  deep  and 
strong  a  hatred,  and  to  know  one  eternal  certain 
thing  would  be  so  roundly  restful,  I  could  then  go 
on:  I  could  vanquish  the  potent  pettinesses  which 
beset  me. 

I  do  not  want  from  God  a  passport,  a  safe-conduct 
into  heaven.  I  don't  want  to  get  into  heaven. 
I  don't  know  what  it  is,  but  the  word  has  sounds  of 
finality,  as  if  all  winds,  sweet  nervous  petal-laden 


A  fluttering-moth  wish  253 

winds,  had  stopped  blowing  forever.  For  cycles 
and  centuries  to  come  the  Soul  of  me  will  be  too 
restless  to  hve  where  winds  can  not  blow. 
I  love  the  journey:  so  that  only  I  might  have  one  dim 
torch  to  go  by.  I  love  the  pitfalls  and  ditches — 
all  the  dangers — black-shaded  woods  and  wolds, 
and  lonesome  plains  and  briery  paths,  and  very 
wet  swamps,  and  strong  whistling  gales  which  chill 
me:  so  that  I  could  feel  but  one  tiny  bright-bladed 
truth,  within  and  without,  pricking  and  urging  me  to 
struggle  on  through  it  all  till  I  might  emerge  at  last 
like  a  human  being,  rather  than  linger  indifferent 
and  inanimate  like  a  jaded  wood-nymph  in  drearily 
pleasant  spaces. 


254  Twenty  inches  of  ajarness 


To-morrow 

GOD  might  come  to  visit  me  on  a  Monday 
afternoon. 
He  would  come  in  at  the  door  of  my  blue- 
white  room  which  had  been  left  about  twenty 
inches  ajar:  for  I  cannot  imagine  God,  the  aloof 
and  reticent,  opening  a  shut  door  to  visit  anyone. 
It  is  as  if  God  purposely  lacks  all  initiative.  If  I 
wish  to  meet  God  I  must  first  suflPer  deeps  of  terror 
and  passion  and  loneliness  to  make  the  mood  that 
wants  it.  Then  I  must  train  my  life  down  to  two 
plain  frocks.  And  to  crown  all  my  room-door  must 
be  left  ajar  on  the  day  he  happens  to  come  or  he 
will  not  come  in.  That  seems  certain:  but  for 
twenty  inches  of  ajarness  at  my  door  he  will  not 
come  in. 

In  it  God  is  quite  fair.  I  do  the  reaching-out  and 
I  live  out  the  despairs :  he  furnishes  a  fact  to  go  upon : 
I  go  upon  it,  in  some  anguish  doubtless:  but  then 
mine,  not  God's,  are  the  lights  and  the  translated 
splendor.  It  is  a  *  gentleman's  game'  God  plays. 
It  is  because  I  feel  that  to  be  true,  more  than  for 
that  he  is  the  Dealer,  that  I  would  have  a  word  with 
him. 

On  a  Monday  afternoon — 
He  might  come  in  the  figure  of  a  precise  mystic- 


Twenty  inches  of  ajarness  255 

looking  little  old  man,  punctilious  of  dress  and  man- 
ner like  an  English  duke  on  the  stage.  He  might 
wear  overwhelmingly  correct  afternoon  attire,  with 
spats  and  a  monocle  on  a  wide  ribbon.  It  someway 
fills  my  peculiar  trivial  concepts  of  God:  mystic- 
seeming  because  he  is  the  God  of  the  dead  dusty 
hosts  of  Israel,  and  punctiliously  modern  because 
he  is  also  the  God  of  new-poeted  radium-gifted 
Now.  A  God  like  a  druid  or  like  Aladdin's  genie, 
such  as  I  fancied  as  a  child,  or  hke  Jove  or  Vulcan, 
would  seem  an  inadequate  and  unsuitable  God. 
What  would  such  a  one  know  of  the  shape  and  fashion 
of  my  two  plain  dresses,  and  of  my  shoes,  and  my 
breakfasts,  and  the  charmed  surface  joy  in  the  back 
of  a  magazine?  God,  to  be  God  to  me,  must  know 
all  those  things. 

And  if  he  only  bespoke  me  in  thunderous  preludes 
touching  souls'  triumphant  apotheoses — bold  and 
intolerable  ecstasies  beyond  heaven's  last  poignantest 
door — it  would  be  nothing  to  my  purpose.  Those 
my  poet-brain  can  make  for  me  if  I  wish.  But  I'd 
hke  God  to  explain  me  the  little  frightful  puzzles 
which  thrive  all  around  me  in  the  wide  daylight 
of  this  knife-and-fork-ness. 

God  might  come  walking  lightly  in  and  perhaps 
seat  himself  fastidiously  in  my  chastest  chair.  He 
might  cross  one  knee  over  the  other.     He  might 


2^6  Twenty  inches  of  ajarness 

adjust  his  monocle  and  regard  me  through  it  specu- 
latively or  sadly  or  politely-wearily.  I  should  be 
outwardly  calm  but  I  might  feel  an  inward  panic: 
lest  he  go  away  again  without  having  told  me  a  fact. 
I  might  say  to  God:  *God,  if  you  please,  this  small 
blue  vase  on  my  window-sill — I  see  it  and  I  touch 
it  and  I  love  it — will  you  tell  me,  you  who  know, 
is  there  a  blue  vase  there  or  is  there  no  vase?' 
And  God  might  merely  glance  at  the  vase  through 
his  glass  and  daintily  hold  his  white  handkerchief 
crumpled-up  in  his  gray-gloved  fingers  and  might 
merely  say:  'Madame,  you  have  eyes  with  which 
to  see  the  vase  and  hands  with  which  to  touch  it 
and  sentiments  to  lend  it  charm  for  you,  no  doubt. 
Then  why  not  let  them  inform  you  as  to  its  ac- 
tuality?' 

And  then  I  might  say,  with  a  weariness  equal  to 
God's:  *My  senses  are  pleasant — they  are  sweet — 
but  they  do  not  inform  me,  or  they  inform  me 
wrong.  Because  they  don't  plainly  tell  me  whether 
it's  a  Blue  Vase  of  a  Blue  Shadow — just  for  that  I 
burn  in  little  disconcerting  hell-fires,  and  vulture- 
thoughts  with  beaks  and  talons  come  and  tear  me 
in  the  night,  and  I  starve  and  decay  trivially,  and 
my  life  is  a  flattish  ruin  and  a  tasteless  darkness  and 
a  slight  shallow  death,  a  death  in  the  sunshine — 
I  am  fed-up  with  a  sense  of  death  because  of  pricking 


i\ 


Twenty  inches  of  ajarness  257 

doubts  as  to  my  blue  vase*s  realness.* 
To  which,  again,  God  might  reply  with  his  head 
tilted  to  one  side,  tranquil  and  impersonal:  *As  to 
that,  Madame,  there  may  be  less  death  in  doubt 
than  in  certainty  about  your  vase.  You  might  in 
discovering  it  discover  in  yourself  no  right  whatever 
to  the  sunshine — no  right  to  live  in  it,  no  right  to 
die  in  it.' 

And  I  might  answer,  with  some  insolent  feeling: 
*I  should  wish  to  discover  the  fact  about  it  though  it 
proved  to  me  I  don't  exist  and  never  existed — that 
I'm  a  dust  on  a  moth's  wing,  and  at  that  alien — 
not  belonging  there.' 

Upon  which  God,  for  what  I  know,  might  only 
shrug-the-shoulders. 

In  that  identity  he  might  shrug-the-shoulders  or 
break-the-world  with  equal  omnipotent  plausible- 
ness. 

But  I  might  try  again.  I  might  say:  *One  thing 
feels  realer  than  my  blue  vase — this  blue-and-green 
Necklace  which  my  Soul  wears.  It  is  rare  and  re- 
cherche but  my  beautiful  Soul  is  very  tired  from 
wearing  it.  Will  you  please  unclasp  it  for  me?' 
And  God  might  say,  deprecatory:  Tray,  Madame, 
do  you  consider  what  portion  of  the  beauty  you 
mention  may  be  in  the  Necklace?  Should  I  unclasp  it 
— it  is  doubtful  whether  you  would  recognize  your 


258  Twenty  inches  of  ajarness 

soul  without  it/ 

To  which  I  might  answer,  with  more  insolent  feel- 
ing: *I  don't  know  anything  of  that  and  I  don't 
care  for  it.  I  only  know  I  want  the  Necklace  off. 
To  wear  it  makes  me  languid  and  frenzied  and 
worn — full  of  wild  goaded  saneness  and  the  wish 
to  go  violently  mad.' 

And  God  might  answer:  'Permit  me  to  express  my 
regrets  for  those  sentiments  which,  I  should  add, 
I  neither  concur  in  nor  refute  nor  deny  nor  share.' 
There  I  might  be:  conversationally  whip-sawed. — 
God  is  full  of  works  of  beauty,  serene  and  miracu- 
lous: Gray  Lakes  and  Blue  Mourning  Mountains 
and  Deserts  beneath  the  Moon.  Those  have  quietly 
ravished  me  many  and  many  a  night  and  day — and 
will  again,  and  still  again,  in  pacing  To-morrows. 
But  I  can't  tell  What  O'CIock  it  is  by  them.  And 
if  God  were  by  me  and  I  asked  him  the  time  the  odds 
are  all  that  he  would  look  at  the  toy-face  of  my  little 
ivory  toy-clock,  which  sets  on  my  desk  where  I 
can  see  it  myself,  and  tell  me  the  time  by  that. 
But  though  he  is  thus  perplexing  he  knows  the  right 
time  and  could  tell  me  it. 

For  that  restlessly  I  wish  God  would  make  me  one 
brief  visit. 

I  wish  that  though  he  should  so  godlily  baffle  me 
and  divinely  bore  me. 


A  profoundly  delicious  idea  259 


To-morrow 

IT  is  nineteen  minutes  after  one  on  a  summer 
night.  And  if  only  I  felt  a  bit  hungry  this 
is  what  I  should  wish — spread  out  on  a  damask 
cloth  before  me  in  a  few  gold-medalhoned  Chinese 
dishes,  with  no  forks  or  knives :  first  of  all,  two  thin 
foie-gras  sandwiches,  four  grilled  snails  and  maybe 
a  little  alligator  pear:  on  top  of  those,  two  truffles: 
on  top  of  those,  two  slim  onions:  on  top  of  those, 
two  thin  salted  biscuits:  on  top  of  those,  a  bit  of 
Camembert  cheese:  on  top  of  that,  two  cigarettes: 
on  top  of  all  a  hollow-stemmed  glass  of  sparkling 
Burgundy. 

I'm  not  hungry,  but  it  is  comforting  to  think  how 
delightful  that  supper  would  taste  if  I  were.  Food 
is  a  so  magic  rich  gusty  gift  bestowed  on  the  human 
race:  and  is  besides  a  profoundly  delicious  Idea. 
I  like  food  better  to  imagine  than  even  to  eat.  If 
I  were  hungry  I  think  I  could  obtain  that  chaste 
supper  item  for  item,  and  eat  it:  swallow  it  down 
magic  and  all,  and  thus  vanquish  it  magic  and  all, 
and  there  an  end.  So  I  am  glad  I  am  not  hungry. 
It  is  much  more  delectable  to  sit  here  and  think 
that  if  I  were — 
ij  I  were — 
a  Hollow-stemmed  Glass  of  Sparkling  Burgundy. 


26o  A  profoundly  delicious  idea 

two  cigarettes. 

a  Bit  of  Camembert  Cheese. 

two  Thin  Salted  Biscuits. 

two  Slim  Onions. 

two  TrufHes. 

two  Thin  Foie-Gras  Sandwiches:  Four  Grilled  Snails: 

and  maybe  a  Little  Alligator  Pear. 

If  I  were  a  bit  hungry:  oh,  the  idea  of  a  little  supper! 

It  would  then  be  blestness,  benediction — fruit  of 

the  very  garden  of  Paradise! 


A  mountebank^ s  cloak  261 


To-morrow 

I  AM  so  Clever.  I  am  the  Cleverest  human  being 
I  know. 
I  have  thought  my  Cleverness  an  outer  quality, 
a  mountebank's  cloak,  and  as  such  not  belonging  in 
this  book  of  my  own  self.  But  there  are  no  outer 
quahties.  Everything  in  and  about  me  is  my  own 
self. 

My  Cleverness  is  of  high  quality — even  supernatural, 
I  have  thought — and  is  of  unobvious  tenors. 
To  any  essentially  false  nature,  such  as  mine,  a 
quick  and  positive  Cleverness  is  its  needfulest 
resource  in  coping  with  this  pushing  world.  To  any 
un-sanely  sensitive  nature  such  as  mine  Cleverness 
is  its  fender  against  human  encounters  and  on- 
slaughts. 

There  is  no  Cleverness  in  this  I  write.     There  is 
writing  skill  and  my  dead-feeling  genius.     But  my 
Cleverness  is  beside  those  points. 
I  use  Cleverness  when  I  encounter  people. 
Sometimes  I  like  people  and  wish  to  impress  them. 
Always  I  am  vain  and  sometimes  I  wish  my  vanity 
catered  to. 

And  I  can  get  from  people  whatever  tribute  I  choose. 
I  mostly  choose  to  bewilder  and  half-fascinate  which 
is  easiest:  I  talk  about  anything,  nothing,  everything 


262  A  mountebank^ s  cloak 

v/ith  a  tinsel-bright  complexity  which  captures 
average  intellects.  And  even  very  Clever  people 
seem  not  Clever  to  me  because  I  feel  so  exceeding 
Clever  to  myself.  I  am  a  little  more  intuitive,  a 
little  falser,  a  little  lightning-quicker  than  the  most 
artistically  antic  mentalities  I  have  known. 
I  am  a  lady  with  the  ladies,  a  woman  with  women,  a 
highly  intelligent  writer  with  writers,  a  loosed  fish 
with  the  loose  fish:  being  all  the  time  nothing  but 
my  own  self,  unspeakably  incongruent.  Having 
never  found  anyone  remotely  matching  me  in  bar- 
baric and  devastating  incongruity  of  nature  I  use 
in  human  encounters  whatever  phase  makes  the 
occasion  most  gently  befit  me.  I  cater,  or  I  thrill 
some  bastard  dull  brain,  or  I  grow  roundly  versatile: 
all  with  a  sudden  coruscant  Cleverness  which  is  not 
in  itself  any  of  Me  but  is  my  mountebank's  scarlet 
cloak. 

But  its  main  cause  and  reason  is  not  vanity  nor  a 
fancy  for  piquant  trickery,  nor  the  wish  to  try  my 
superior  wings  in  glowing  human  atmospheres — 
the  preponderant  impulse  to  fly  because  I  can  fly. 
It's  none  of  those,  but  a  need  of  protection,  of  a 
bright  armor  to  keep  other  people's  superficialities 
from  touching  me.  There's  a  human  effluvium 
which  I  feel  from  people  which  would  touch,  wrap, 
enclose  me  in  a  harsh  vapor — a  half-froze,  half-sting- 


A  mountebank's  cloak  263 

ing  worldly  cloud.  It  hurts  with  thin  cruelness  like 
a  corroding  spray  of  acid  on  my  skin:  unless  I  send 
out  the  sudden  air  of  my  own  Cleverness  to  keep 
it  off  and  away. 

It  is  long  months  since  I  have  encountered  people 
with  any  impulse  save  hastily  to  avoid  them.  But 
if  I  should  meet,  with  an  aggression  of  mettle  and 
mood,  some  woman  or  man  or  little  group  of  human 
sorts  (except  children  of  and  for  whom  I  have  always 
a  fear  and  a  respect)  I  should  then  suddenly  be 
casual  and  half-fascinating  and  phosphorescently 
glowing  and  insolent:  being  inside  me  haggard  from 
sohtude,  wistful  from  a  bereftness  and  a  beauty- 
sense,  suffering  and  lost. 
Ah,  I'm  notably  Clever! 

I  write  a  letter  of  Clever  delicate  surprisingness — 
it  is  the  only  Clever  writing  I  do.  There  are  twenty 
people,  now  long  outside  my  life,  to  whom  a  Mary- 
Mac-Lane  letter  is  the  agreeably- vividest  thing  that 
could  come  into  a  day.  The  letter,  which  is  an  un- 
apparent  cater,  is  not  real  Me  who  am  someway  a 
strong  and  contemptuous  spirit — but  instead  one 
tinsel  facet.  And  it  makes  people — people!  people! 
— admire  and  defer  to  me  in  a  subtlest  human  aspect: 
an  unwilling  antagonistic  homage.  It  stays  me, 
buoys  me  for  the  time. 
I  am  profoundly  Clever  in  that  I  who  am  in  reality 


264  A  mountebank's  cloak 

so  futile,  so  wavering,  so  sensitively  lyingly  artistic, 

can  still  show  myself  aggressively  Clever  to  other 

persons.    I  must,  being  false,  be  Clever  in  order  to 

get  by. 

It  is  at  its  best  a  trickster*s  quality:  and  so  much  the 

more  am  I  Clever  in  stretching  it  out  over  my  shaded 

life  like  a  strong  bright  cloak-of-mail. 

Just  to  be  Mary  MacLane — who  am  first  of  all  my 

own  self! — and  get  by  with  it! — how  I  do  that  I  can 

not  quite  make  out. 

Vm  by  odds  the  Cleverest  human  being  I  know: 

more  than  likely  one  of  the  Cleverest  who  ever  lived 

in  this  world. 


A  familiar  sharp  twist  265 


To-morrow 

I  HAVE — a  Broken  Heart — 
It  is  nearly  a  year  now. 
It  feels  strange  to  be  writing  it.   What  is  one's 
Heart?     But  it  is  a  plain  fact  of  me. 
I  have  not  had  a  Broken  Heart  in  the  years  before. 
I  have  had  silly  fancies — I  have  wasted  the  outer 
tissues  of  my  Heart,  and  it  has  been  bruised  and 
battered.      But    nothing   pierced   deep    enough   to 
break  it  till  this. 

My  Broken  Heart  is  the  outstanding  inner  item  of 
my  life :  and  it  still  is  a  very  small  thing  even  in  my  own 
reckoning.  It  tortures  me  minutely  all  the  minutes 
and  moments  and  hours.  And  yet  my  all-round  life 
moves  on  beside  it  and  often  passes  it  on  the  road. 
My  Broken  Heart  contributes  nothing,  no  cause  and 
no  urge,  to  the  writing  of  this  song  of  my  Soul  and 
bones.  It  rather  is  a  handicap.  It  makes  me  sit 
and  brood.  It  makes  my  eyelids  heavy  and  my 
head  droop.  It  makes  my  shoulders  ache.  It  makes 
me  sit  longish  half-hours  with  my  head  on  my  lonely 
hands.  It  fills  me  with  foolish  wasting  despair. 
Its  foolishness  is  the  foremost  thing  about  my 
Broken  Heart.  It  is  not  a  foolishness  of  worldly 
reasons  nor  of  outer  causes  but  of  all  the  surprising 
folly  of  myself  crowded  into  my  Heart  and  into  that 


266  A  familiar  sharp  twist 

which  Broke  it.  The  foolishness  would  not  be  so 
noticeable  if  the  Brokenness  were  not  so  hideous 
and  genuine  and  actual  and  matter-of-course.  It 
was  foolish  to  lay  myself  open,  who  am  humanly 
starved,  to  the  possible  Breaking  of  my  Heart: 
and  doubly  foolish  to  let  it  be  Broken.  And  being 
left  in  possession  of  a  Broken  Heart  I  feel  it  to  be  a 
triply  insanely  foolish  thing:  but  complete  and 
absolute  and  natural. 
I  am  so  oddly  a  fool. 

The  proper  price  for  such  or  such  a  thing  in  the 
Market  might  be  one-and-twenty  drops  of  red  human 
blood.  But  I  headlongly  pay  for  it  one-and-ninety 
drops:  each  one  touched  with  fire,  shot  with  purple, 
tinctured  with  hottest  spirit-essence.  The  proper 
payment  for  Love  is  to  pay  back  value  received — 
which  is  enough.  But  I  in  addition  dip  my  white 
bare  foot  into  red  world-and-hell  flames  by  way  of 
quixotic  bonus.  When  other  persons  emerge  from 
Love  with  the  old-fashioned  accustomed  wounds 
and  scars  I  emerge  with  besides  an  immensely  use- 
less futileiy  ruined  foot. 

It  is  wildest  foolishness.     Not  merely  folly.     Folly 
is  something  picturesque — a  bit  romantic. 
I   am  oddly  a  fool.     It  is  that  consciousness  that 
rushes  over  me  with  each  sad  black  thought  of  my 
Broken  Heart, 


' 


A  familiar  sharp  twist  267 

My  Broken  Heart — it  feels  half-false  to  myself  as 
I  write  it.  And  the  written  words  look  half-false  to 
my  eyes.  But  it  is  realer  than  my  fingernails: 
than  my  palms:  than  my  aching  left  foot. 
My  Broken  Heart,  besides  being  a  triviality  is  a 
mistake,  and  will  pass  in  time  doubtless,  but  is  long 
about  it. 

It  is  one  thing  I  do  not  dwell  upon  in  this  book  of  me. 
A  Broken  Heart  is  sharply  immediate  like  a  newly- 
bitten  tongue.  It  may  bleed  at  a  touch.  To 
dwell  on  it  connects  me  strainedly  with  the  world 
around,  and  the  world  is  really  gone  from  me. 
This  book  is  I  as  I  breathe  alone.  I  cannot  write 
in  it  the  silly  shadowy  Breaking  of  my  Broken  Heart. 
This  writing  is  I  Just  Beneath  My  Skin.  My  Broken 
Heart  is  beneath  bones  and  flesh.  And  though  my 
M.-MacLane  heart  intact  is  wildly  individual,  my 
Broken  Heart  is  merely  human:  made  not  alone 
by  me  and  not  alone  by  God.  Its  place  in  this  I 
write  is  just  outside  the  margins. 
At  times  my  Broken  Heart  feels  far  off  while  Vm 
feeling  it  hideous  and  wan  inside  my  breast.  Myself 
is  Me,  and  much  of  Me  had  nothing  to  do  with  my 
Heart  when  it  Broke:  though  I  loved  with  all  of  Me. 
I  loved  with  all  of  Me  one  who  lives  in  New  York — 
and  I  lost  and  lost,  all  the  way.  There  was  mere 
human    ordinariness    about    which    I    built    up  a 


268  A  familiar  sharp  twist 

strangely  sincere  temple-of-grace  which  I  looked 
to  see  shed  light  on  my  life  like  the  new  eternal 
beauty  of  a  Day-break.  I  gave  the  best  I  knew  to 
it,  from  the  distance,  and  I  lost.  The  day  was  a 
little  day  and  broke  at  last  only  like  my  Heart.  All 
was  broken  without  so  much  as  clasp-of-hands. 
I  am  realest,  strongest,  passionately-sincerest  in  my 
essential  known  falseness — 

It  was  all  foolish  and  petty  and  someway  false  but 
I  felt  foolishly  and  shudderingly  that  I  could  live 
no  more.  But  I  am  singularly  brave  from  Hfe-Iong 
custom.  I  have  no  pleas  and  surrenderings  in  me. 
I  shudder  but  live  on. 

One  Thursday  I  felt  suddenly  oppressed  and  beset 
and  something  in  my  throat  cried  out  to  the  absent 
God  to  help  me  and  guard  me. 
It  was  something  in  my  throat  which  shrieked  it 
dumbly  in  the  deafening  silence  in  my  room.  It 
was  not  I  myself:  for  I  am  unsuppliant  toward  every- 
one human  and  divine  though  there  often  come  such 
Thursdays. 

Harder  than  Thursdays  are  Fridays  and  some  other 
days  when  comes  a  familiar  sharp  twist  beneath  my 
chest-bones  without  the  cognizance  of  my  remem- 
bering thoughts:  and  when  though  I  strive  against 
it  my  Broken  Heart  makes  me  sit  longish  half-hours 
with  my  head  on  my  hands. 


A  dark  bright  fierce  fire  269 


To-morrow 

I  AM  Lonely.     I  am  so  Lonely  that  I  can  feel 
myself  rattle  inside  my  life  like  one  live  seed 
in  a  hollow  gourd. 
I  am  on  fire  with  Loneliness. 

I  am  living  this  month  alone  in  this  house.  The 
solitude  is  pregnant:  Doors  and  Door-knobs  and 
Curtains  and  Tables  have  silently  come  alive  in  it 
and  have  taken  on  identities  like  those  of  tamed 
wild  beasts. 

I  do  housework — I  dust  window-sills  and  water 
flowers.  I  gather  up  newspapers  and  brush  the 
floors  with  a  dust-mop.  I  wash  my  dishes.  I  cook 
my  breakfasts.  I  look  out  of  windows.  I  linger 
at  screen-doors. 

I  answer  the  telephone:  I  say,  'They're  not  at  home.* 
I  change  my  frock  and  put  on  a  hat  and  a  cloak  and 
gloves  and  go  softly  out  the  door  and  front  gate  on 
an  errand. 

I  meet  people  on  the  street  whom  I  know,  whom 
I  may  speak  to,  whom  I  may  avoid:  who  may  speak 
to  me:  who  may  avoid  me:  for  I  am  at  best  well 
hated  in  this  Butte. 

I  come  back  again,  softly  unlock  the  door  and  come 
in.  I  come  upstairs,  take  off  the  out-door  things, 
give  a  hasty  side-glance  in  my  glass  and  go  down- 


270  A  dark  bright  fierce  fire 

stairs. 

I  read  awhile.    To-day  I  read  an  old-fashioned  short 

story  whose  soft  wondrous  prose  cadences  fed  my 

senses — the  Parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son.— for  this 

my  son  was  dead  and  is  alive — was  lost  and  is 

found — . 

But  I  am  very  restless  and  cannot  read  long. 

I  am  on  fire — dark  bright  fierce  fire  with  Loneliness. 

I  move  about  again  from  room  to  room.    I  look  out 

of  windows  and  linger  at  doors. 

I  close  my  eyes  and  open  my  eyes. 

My  Soul-and-bones !     I'm  afire  with  Loneliness! 

It  is  Loneliness  not  made  of  the  Empty  House  and 

the  tamed  wild  Door-knobs  and  Doors  and  Curtains 

and  the  Lonely  Errands.    Those  are  its  small-fruits. 

Itself  is  my  ancient  daylight  Loneliness  dating  from 

Three- Years-Old  when   I   first  began  whisperingly 

analyzing  things  and  finding  little  hfe-items  to  be  of 

a  fierce  bitter  importance. 

If   I    were   living   among   people,    friendly   people, 

then  the   Loneliness  though  unchanged  would  be 

disguised  and  vested  with  a  padded  muffling  power — 

false,  belike,  and  a  mistake  (but  everything  is  false 

and  a  mistake:   only  there  are  wrong  mistakes  and 

right  mistakes) — but  made  of  the  world-stuff  that 

lets  a  human  being  get  by  in  this  nervous  life. 

But  it  would  be  of  no  use  now.    I  must  face  Lone- 


A  dark  bright  fierce  fire  271 

liness:  and  outface  it.  I  do,  and  with  no  effort: 
for  I  am  Lonelier  than  Loneliness's  self.  So  it  feels. 
This  locked-in  mood — soon  it  may  be  worn  down 
and  outgrown,  and  the  husks  blown  away  in  the 
winds. 

But  may  come  after  it  a  wilder  Loneliness  of  being 
free,  fearfully  free:  flavored  with  the  heaviness  of 
rain  at  night  and  draggledness  of  beggar-women's 
skirts. — 

Meanwhile  bright  and  black  among  Doors  and 
Door-knobs  and  Curtains  and  Tables  burns  the 
fire  of  this  Loneliness  with  strong,  strong  flame. 
It  is  mystic  agony.  There  is  no  thinking  in  it.  There 
is  an  utterly  irrational  wish,  an  aching  yearning  for 
people:  not  people  to  see,  or  listen  to,  or  talk  to, 
but — humanness  I  could  jeel  with  familiarity. 
I  wish  for  hands  and  bodies  near  me:  breath  for 
mine  faintly  to  mingle  with :  the  feel  of  their  human 
garments  in  the  room  around  me:  the  feel  df  the 
pulsing  blood  in  their  veins  remotely  vibrant  in  the 
air:  the  feel  of  minds  and  spirits  and  throats  and 
rich  warm  virile  hair  of  human  heads  keeping  me 
warmly  company.  I  have  heard  one  may  step 
rarefied  out  of  this  living-place  into  the  Fourth 
Dimension,  where  one  feels  everything  without  the 
efforts  of  feeling,  and  knows  everything  without  the 
weights  of  knowing.     It  might  be  that  I  grope  for 


272  A  dark  bright  fierce  fire 

in  this  black  bright  anguish. 

Yet  I  feel  rarely  rarefied,  heavily  rarefied,  wornly 
rarefied  in  this  living-place  where  Loneliness  burns 
me  in  strong  fire  and  where  I  can  shake  my  life 
like  a  hollow  gourd  and  hear  the  eerie  rattling  sound 
I  make  in  it. 


Late  ajternoon  273 


To-morrow 

CTT  night  as  I  slept  I  dreamed  a  vivid  dream. 
I  dreamed  it  was  late  afternoon  and  I  was 
locked  in  a  condemned  cell,  sentenced  to  die. 
I  would  be  led  out  and  hanged  on  a  gallows  the  fol- 
lowing morning  at  day-break.  I  dreamed  I  sat 
beneath  a  narrow  window  in  the  cell  through  which 
shone  the  light  of  the  waning  afternoon.  The  light 
was  very  pale,  as  of  sunshine  long  dead.  I  dreamed 
I  held  on  my  knees  a  small  block  of  paper  which 
had  a  half-inch  blue  border  at  the  top  to  mark  a 
perforation,  and  in  my  hand  I  had  a  red  pencil. 
And  I  dreamed  I  had  cheated  the  gallows  and  was 
writing  a  little  ballad  about  it  in  sudden  rhymes  and 
rhythms  quite  alien  to  my  waking  forms.  When  I 
awoke  the  song  was  still  beating  time  in  my  brain. 
And  with  my  black  awake-time  pencil  I  wrote, 
except  for  two  words,  the  rhyme,  title  and  all,  as  I 
dreamed; 

LATE   AFTERNOON. 

They'll  think  when  I  pass  through  that  door 

To-mbrrow  in  the  dawn, 

ril  then  be  going  to  my  death. 

It's  Fve  already  gone. 


274  Late  afternoon 

They'll  watch  me  walk  serenely  out, 
Still-nerved  and  somber-eyed, 
*So  strong/  they'll  say,  *to  meet  her  death.* 
To-day  it  is  I  died. 

There'll  be  my  pulses  quick  with  life, 
My  white  sweet  throat,  my  breath: 
But  flesh  and  bone  are  all  will  hang. 
This  noon  I  met  my  death. 

For  days  I  charmedly  dwelt  on  death — 
I  raved  at  death — I  swore — 
Till  vexedly  death  waived  the  date: 
And  came  this  Day-Bejore, 

From  being  lured  with  artful  thoughts 
My  life  abortive  grew. 
From  being  broached  in  livid  mood 
My  death  aborted  too. 

To-morrow  they'll  remark  my  calm — 
No  fuss,  no  fright,  no  swoon. 
They'll  kill  a  wench  to-morrow  dawn 
Was  dead  to-day  at  noon. 

Three  oddnesses  are  in  that  dream: 
that  it  is  true  to  life  in  that  I  in  my  lightning  Mary- 
Mac-Lane-ness  would  manage  to  cheat  a  gallows, 
that  it  is  untrue  to  life  in  that  instead  of  writing  of 


Late  afternoon  275 

it  in  the  true  twilit  poetry  of  my  own  sufficient  prose 
I  wrote  it  in  the  shallow  trick-phrasing  of  rhyme, 
a  little  serenade  to  the  gibbet. 

that  it  catches  and  holds  my  Shadow-self  who  lives 
not  inside  me  but  Reside  me:  the  resembling  dis- 
sembling shadow  I  cast  when  I  stand  between  the 
dayhghts  of  the  actual  world  and  the  quivering  films 
of  the  region  of  dreams. — 

My  owned  mysteries  thrive  apace.  They  are  poetry 
and  beauty  and  loveliness  yet  they  bruise  and  batter 
me  and  split  me  to  atoms.  Withal  are  terrifyingly 
superfluous :  they  violently  kill  the  wench  to-morrow 
dawn  who  died  restfully  to-day  at  noon. 


276  An  ancient  witch-light 


To-morrow 

ALSO  I  am  someway  the  Lesbian  woman. 
ZA  It  is  but  one  phase — one  which  slightly 
^  ^  touches  each  other  phase  I  own.  And  in 
it  I  am  poetic  and  imaginative  and  worldly  and 
amorous  and  gentle  and  true  and  strong  and  weak 
and  ardent  and  shy  and  sensitive  and  generous  and 
morbid  and  sweet  and  fine  and  false. 
The  Lesbian  sex-strain  as  an  effect  is  reckoned  a 
prenatal  influence — and,  as  I  conceive,  it  comes  also 
of  conglomerate  incarnations  and  their  reactions  and 
flare-backs.  Of  some  thus  bestowed  it  makes  strange 
hard  hightly  emotional  indefinably  vicious  women, 
turbulent  and  brilliant  of  mind,  mystically  over- 
borne, overwrought  of  heart.  They  are  marvels 
of  perverse  barbaric  energy.  They  make  with  men 
varied  flinty  friendships,  but  to  each  other  they  are 
friends,  lovers,  victims,  preyers,  masters,  slaves: 
the  flawed  fruits  of  one  oblique  sex-inherence. 
Except  two  breeds — the  stupid  and  the  narrowly 
feline — all  women  have  a  touch  of  the  Lesbian: 
an  assertion  all  good  non-analytic  creatures  refute 
with  horror,  but  quite  true:  there  is  always  the 
poignant  intensive  personal  taste,  the  flair  of  inner- 
sex,  in  the  tenderest  friendships  of  women. 
For  myself,  there  is  no  vice  in  my  Lesbian  vein. 


An  ancient  witch-light  277 

I  am  too  personally  fastidious,  too  temperamentally 
dishonest,  too  eerily  wavering  to  walk  in  direct 
repellent  roads  of  vice  even  in  freest  moods.  There 
is  instead  a  pleasant  degeneracy  of  attitude  more 
debauching  to  my  spirit  than  any  mere  trivial 
trainant  vice  would  be.  And  a  fascination  in  it 
tempers  my  humanness  with  an  evil-feeling  power. 
I  have  lightly  kissed  and  been  kissed  by  Lesbian 
lips  in  a  way  which  filled  my  throat  with  a  sudden 
subtle  pagan  blood-flavored  wistfulness,  ruinous  and 
contraband:  breath  of  bewildering  demoniac  winds 
smothering  mine. 

Lesbian  essence  is  of  mental  quality.  There  are 
aggressively  endowed  women  whose  minds  are  so 
bent  that  they  instinctively  nurture  any  element 
in  themselves  which  is  blighting  and  ill-omened  and 
calamitous  in  eff'ect.  There  are  some  to  which  the 
natural  inhibition  of  their  own  sex  is  lure  and  chal- 
lenge. There  are  some  so  solitary  by  destiny  and 
growth  that  the  first  woman-friend  who  comes  into 
their  adolescence  with  sympathy  and  understanding 
wins  a  passionate  Lesbian  adoration  the  deeper  for 
being  unrealized.  There  are  some  so  roiledly  giftedly 
incongruous  in  trait  that  they  are  prone  to  catch 
and  hold  any  additional  twisted  shreds  afloat  in 
human  air-currents. 
Each  of  those  influences  biases  the  Mind  of  me,  which 


278  An  ancient  witch-light 

is  none  the  less  a  clear- visioned  mind  which  rates  no 
thing  a  truth  which  it  knows  to  be  a  lie:  though  it 
batten  on  the  lie. 

— often  here  and  there  around  this  human  world 
the  twisted  and  perverted  and  strongly  false  concepts 
are  the  strong  actual  working  facts  and  the  straight 
road  is  myth — myth — existent  but  in  visions — 
I  don't  understand  why  it*s  so:  I  know  it  is  so. 
Not  only  so  with  me:  so  with  millions  whose  stars 
jangled. 

Not  always.    But  often. — ■ 

The  deep-dyed  Lesbian  woman  is  a  creature  whose 
sensibihties  are  over-balanced:  whose  imagination 
moves  on  mad  low-flying  wings:  whose  brain  is 
good:  whose  predilections  are  warped:  who  lives 
always  in  unrest:  whose  inner  walls  are  streaked 
with  garish  heathen  pigments:  whose  copious  love- 
instincts  are  an  odd  mixture  of  mirth,  malice  and 
luxure. 

Its  effects  in  me  who  am  straight-made  in  nothing, 
but  strongly  crooked,  is  to  vivify  tenfold  or  a 
hundredfold  or  a  thousandfold  in  my  shaded  vision 
the  womanness  of  any  woman  whose  inner  or  outer 
beauty  arrests  and  stirs  my  spirit. 
I  see  in  some  woman,  some  girl,  any  who  attracts 
me — be  she  a  casual  acquaintance,  or  a  Victorian 
poet  dead  fifty  years  whose  poetry  and  portrait  live, 


An  ancient  witch-light  279 

or  an  actor  in  a  play,  or  a  sweet-browed  friend,  or  an 
Old  Master — I  see  one  such  as  if  all  her  charm  were 
newly  painted  and  placed  near  me  shining  wet  with 
delicate  fresh  paint.  It  is  bewitching  to  look  at: 
it  has  a  deep  seductive  fragrance  of  smell:  it  is 
luxuriantly  aromatic  to  all  my  known  senses — 
and  two  senses  unknown  float  from  my  deeps  and 
rise  at  it.  The  Stranger  becomes  a  dearly  poignant 
fancy  to  dream  over.  My  Friend  turns  into  a  vivid 
goddess  whose  fingers  and  hair  I  would  touch  tenderly 
with  my  lips. 

Because  of  it  a  little  flame,  pale  but  primal,  leaps 
from  the  flattest  details  of  life.  In  such  a  mood- 
adventure  a  window-shutter  blooms:  a  hair-brush 
glows:  a  sordid  floor  has  gleams  upon  it.  These 
bewildering  frightful  beautifulnesses  in  this  life — . 
— withal  the  same  inherence  which  makes  me  some- 
way Lesbian  makes  me  the  floor  of  the  setting  sun 
— strewn  with  overflowing  gold  and  green  vases  of 
Fire  and  Turquoise — a  sly  and  piercing  annihilation- 
of-beauty,  wonderful  devastating  to  feel — oh,  blight- 
ing breaking  to  feel — oh,  deathly  lovely  to  feel! — 
It  is  the  bewitched  obliquities  that  run  away  with 
me:  grind,  gnaw,  eat  my  true  human  heart  like 
bright  potent  vitriol. 

What  God  means  me  to  do  with  such  gifts  and  phases 
— I  don't  and  don't  understand.  I  never  get  any- 


28o  An  ancient  witch-light 

where  as  I  think  it  out.  I  don't  know  shades  of 
rights  and  wrongs  since  that  ancient  witch-light  has 
found  more  trueness  of  human  feeling  in  me  than 
has  any  simplicity  my  life  knows. 
It  began,  they  say,  with  Sappho  and  her  dreaming 
students  in  the  long-ago  vales  of  Lesbos.  It  may 
be,  I  daresay.  I  know  it  did  not  stop  there.  And 
I  know  that — Greek,  French,  Scotch,  Indian — Welch 
— Japanese — all  women  sense  its  light  lyric  touch. 
For  myself,  I  know  only  it  is  part  and  parcel  in  my 
tangled  tired  coil. 

I  don't  know  whether  I  am  good  and  sweet  in  it  or 
evil  and  untoward. 
And  I  don't  care. 


The  gray-purple  281 


To-morrow 

CLOSE  at  the  east  edge  of  this  Butte  is  a 
barren  ridge  of  Rockies  that  is  sudden 
and  big  and  breathing-looking,  barbarously 
personal,  touched  with  varying  gifted  color-moods 
and  glowering  morose  color-passions:  at  the  south 
the  snow-topped  Highlands  lie  long  faery  solitary 
miles  away,  caressed  at  their  summits  by  thin  soft 
sun-rings  and  sun-vapors  of  salmon  and  sea-green 
and  turquoise  and  mauve:  at  the  west  a  gray- 
shadowed  desert  burns  red-gold  in  the  setting  sun 
and  sleeps  in  pearl-and-ashen  stillness  under  mid- 
night stars:  at  the  north  smaller  spurs  of  the  range 
break  into  foothills  and  bluffs  and  gulches,  restful 
wastes  of  lonely  stones  and  blurred  radiances  of 
tawny  sand:  on  top  of  all  the  rarefied  air  of  these 
plateau  heights  refracts  the  light  into  hot  dazzling 
prisms  at  any  vagrant  flash  of  sun  on  a  trailing 
storm-fringe.  This  Butte  is  capriciously  decorated 
with  sweet  brilliant  metallic  orgies  of  color  at  any 
time,  all  times,  as  if  by  whims  of  pagan  gods  lightly 
drunk  and  lightly  mad. 

St.  Paul-Minnesota  looks  a  greenlier-prettier  town: 
the  Arizona  Caiion  looks  vastly  more  fearfully 
beautiful:  Wichita-Kansas  probably  looks  more  a 
regular   town:    Akron-Ohio    doubtless    looks    more 


282  The  gray-purple 

Americanly  reassuring:  Rome- Italy  must  have  a 
more  'settled*  look:  New  York  is  much  larger  and 
much  brighter-looking. 

Only  this  Butte  looks  deeply  and  exactly  like  Butte- 
Montana. 

Its  insistent  charm  is  that  it  goes  on  strongly  re- 
sembling itself  year  after  year. 
There  is  love  in  me  for  this  Butte. 
I  am  profoundly  lonely  in  it:    my  life-tissues  are 
long-familiar  with  the  feel  of  it:  its  mournful  beauty 
has  entered  like  thin  punishing  iron  into  my  Soul: 
and  my  love  for  it  is  made  of  those  things.    For  no 
reason  I  feel  love  for  this  Butte. 
As  much  as  for  the  mountains  in  their  mourning 
intimateness  I  feel  love  for  all  the  outsides  and  sur- 
faces of  the  town  itself:    the  stone  streets  full  of 
houses  and  shops  and  stores  and  brick  walls  and 
laundry- wagons  and  persons,  the  vacant  lots  where 
boys    play    ball:     the    school-buildings    which    for 
twenty  years  have  needed  the  same  green  grass 
around  them  and  the  same  playgrounds  for  school- 
children to  play  in  (and  will  go  on  twenty  years 
needing  them) :   the  little  mines  in  unexpected  mid- 
town   blocks    with    their   engines    and    hoists   and 
scaffolds  and  green  coppery  dumps:   the  big  mines 
on  the  Hill  busily  working  day  and  night,  a  bristling 
citadel  of  smoke-stacks  and  tall  buildings  above  the 


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Food  and  fire  293 

Victoria  WoodhuII,  from  Paul  of  Tarsus  to  Aaron 
Burr. 

Only  John  Keats  stands  out  alone,  a  true-breathing 
Poet,  an  Inmost  Heart  bleeding  outward. 
The  lyric  poet  is  the  true  poet.  The  lyric  poet 
achieves  no  end  in  his  art.  He  turns  fragments  of 
hght  and  life  into  terms  of  beauty  and  sends  them 
flying  forth  on  flaming  word-wings  which  translate 
the  smooth  human  flesh  they  brush-by  into  delicious 
flesh-of-gold,  flesh-of-petals,  flesh-of-fire!  But  he 
makes  no  morals,  teaches  no  lessons,  finishes  nothing. 
It's  as  it  should  be.  Nothing  is  finished.  The 
mixed  world  is  all  unfinished,  a  glorified  Mistake. 
The  race  is  a  miflionfold  Mistake:  lives  it,  breathes 
it,  battens  on  it — coarsely  and  finely  and  lamentably 
and  musically  and  bravely.  So  that  aH  poetry 
which  wanders  from  the  lyric  is  only  a  play  or  a 
picture  or  an  airship  or  a  cause  which  aims  at  Jait- 
accompliy  attaining  an  object:  it  is  limited  and  man- 
made:  its  beauty  is  lopped  off  like  boughs  and 
branches  after  a  storm:  its  wings  are  chpped.  Its 
distanceless  spaces,  little  and  large,  are  visibly 
engineered  by  mathematic  hands.  But  the  lyric 
poetry  is  the  true  luminous  and  bloody  interpreting 
of  humanness. 

John  Keats  wrote  by  the  lights  of  his  living  and  he 
lived  all  his  days  in  joyous  lyric  anguish. 


294  Food  and  fire 

Once  he  wrote,  'Ever  let  the  Fancy  roam,  Pleasure 
never  is  at  home.'  It  is  a  factful  of  himself — law- 
less, radical  and  non-civilized,  agleam  in  the  mixed 
world.  It  is  everybody — poets,  burglars,  nurse- 
maids: everybody.  He  wrote  it  in  a  hundred  other 
ways,  but  it  is  all  in  that:  it  is  the  lyric  epitome  of 
every  day.  Pleasure  never  is  at  home. 
And  'Heard  melodies  are  sweet,'  he  wrote,  *but 
those  unheard  are  sweeter — 

There  spoke  the  wild  dehcate  wiseness  of  his  brain 
and  the  passionate  dehcate  wonder  of  his  heart. — 
John  Keats!    John  Keats! 

But  everything  he  wrote,  the  Grecian  Urn  itself, 
is  immeasurably  less  lyric  than  himself  writing  it 
and  being  it. 

He  is  rich  bright-wet  living  lyric  for  this  Me  in  this 
Now  though  he  has  Iain  dead  in  Rome  nearly  the 
full  hundred  years. 

My  garbled  life  and  my  thinking  hunger  feed  upon 
him. 

He  was  the  one  human  one  who  walked  on  in  the  way 
before  him:  not  around  the  jagged  little  stones  and 
icy  httle  pools  that  were  in  it:  but  straight  on 
through  them  all,  though  his  lyric  feet  were  quivering 
shuddering  sensitive,  sensitive  beyond  knowledge 
of  commoner  feet  that  walk  around. 
It  fattens  my  leanest  self  to  keep  that  in  my  constant 


Food  and  fire  295 

remembrance. 

The  thought  of  his  brave  radiant  loveliness  reassures 
me  to  myself,  by  the  hour. 

I  am  futile:    but  he  is  mysteriously  omnipotently 
useful  and  I  catch  some  of  it  from  him. 
I  am  half-full  of  vanity:  but  he  is  of  a  lustrous  price- 
less vanity  himself  that  justifies  mine  and  all  the 
world's. 

I  am  fearing  and  false:  but  he  is  so  brave,  so  true 
to  infinite  form,  that  by  it  he  leavens  the  lump  of  the 
whole  world's  mendacious  cowardice. 
My  brain  is  full  of  wilding  darknesses,  snarled  and 
knotted  gifts  and  penchants:  but  into  his  strong 
brain  the  strong  fresh  yellow  rain-washed  sun  shines 
straight  down — through  the  wide  twin-brightness 
of  his  Eyes.  I  look  down  his  Eyes — twin  pubhc 
wells  (he  belongs  pubhcly  and  privately  to  all  this 
mixed  mad  world,  and  anyone  may  look! — ) — I  look 
into  that  titanic  vibrant  brain,  and  mine  catches 
some  of  it:  a  blest  and  precious  Disease,  oh,  a  rare 
Disease! 

My  Heart — my  Heart  feels  strange  and  tired  and 
dead,  a  bit  of  dead-sea  fruit:   but  his  heart,  warm 
and    real    and    boundlessly    unsatisfied,    is    always 
the  deep  quick  fragrant  Rose  of  this  World. 
A  Hero! — a  Poet-at-arms ! — John  Keats! 
*He  has  outsoared  the  shadow  of  our  night,'  wrote 


296  Food  and  fire 

that  Shelley,  and  wrote  no  truer  word. 
I  have  read  so  many  of  the  strange  and  splendid 
things — bits  of  them:  Vergil  and  Homer  and  Villon 
and  Goethe  and  all  the  English  poets,  and  prose 
writers  like  Carlyle  who  in  places  out-poet  poets, — 
and  moderner  ones  and  the  new  poets,  imagists  and 
others:  John  Keats  feels  a  noticeably  braver  thing, 
and  always,  always  a  little  way  beyond.  He  is 
purely  lyric. 

When  he  loved  a  woman  he  loved  the  dubious 
fascinating  Fanny  Brawn — sordid-brained,  worldly: 
to  him  a  mixed  living  devilish-glowing  goddess. 
A  higher-souled  woman  would  neither  have  so 
tortured  nor  so  held  him.  He  was  purely  lyric. 
He  cared  truly  nothing  for  the  verdicts  of  critics 
and  reviewers:  and  in  the  sweet-lipped  boyish 
beauty  of  his  youth  they  truly  and  easily  killed  him. 
It  would  be  like  that — it  had  to  be.  He  was  so 
purely  lyric. 

He  died  in  the  sweet  fierce  dazzling  cause  of  Beauty. 
I  have  so  many  thoughts  and  my  thoughts  are  always 
my  own.  There  are  endless  written  thoughts  deeper 
than  mine — finer,  stronger,  anything-you-Iike.  But 
mine  answer  for  me:  no  written  thoughts  affect 
them,  though  they  thrill  my  reading  hours.  Only 
John  Keats*s  thoughts  can  enter  in  and  crush  and 
cripple  mine. 


Food  and  fire  297 

Because  everybody  is  a  little  bit  like  John  Keats 

I  have  a  starry  thin  edge  of  faith  inside  me.    He  is 

food  for  my  hunger  of  thought,  fire  for  my  passion 

of  life. — John  Keats ! 

He  is  the  resurrection  and  the  life. — 

From  my  desk  he  gazes  at  me  in  a  frame  of  old-goId. 

Every  day  the  sunset  on  the  glass  blurs  his  large 

mournful  joyous  eyes  with  strangest  agonized  sunset 

tears:  he  shows  me  the  sweet,  sweet  intoxication  of 

his  lyric  grief. 

He   died   young,    unfinished — and   oh,    but    it's    a 

shivering  ecstasy  to  think  of  all  those  lyrics  in  him 

he  never  wrote! — the  sweeter  melodies — *  Unheard.' 


298  The  edge  of  mist-and-silver 


To-morrow 

HIDDEN  somewhere  in  the  invisible  unused 
air-plateaus  is  a  little  Child:    mine:    who 
has  never  been  born. 
A  tenet  in  me  is  that  a  woman  by  every  right  and 
by  old  earthen  law  should,  if  she  will,  have  her  child 
— should  be  the  warm-winged  mother. 
I  am  a  devil  and  a  fantasy,  a  jezebel  and  a  wanderer 
in  fields  of  inverted  fungi:   so  I  seem  to  me.     I  do 
not   know   my   status — I    but   know   my   personal 
incidents  as  they  happen.     But  I  am  also  woman: 
a  woman  by  inherence  and  by  fact.    Being  woman 
I  am  the  potential  mother,  mother  of  my  Child  who 
has  not  been  born. 
I  feel  myself  a  fitting  mother. 

I  am  bodily  in  good  health — if  not  robust  yet  durable,  . 
as  a  mother  should  be:  I  am  always  tired  as  if  from  | 
touches  and  weights  of  living  as  a  loving  mother  ' 
should  be:  I  am  warm  of  blood,  latently  savage- 
toothed  like  a  jungle-mother,  deadlier  than  the 
male,  as  a  brave  mother  should  be.  Though  I  have 
no  child  I  have  an  ancient  right  in  my  Child,  and  I 
want  my  Child.  My  Child  Z5,  but  has  not  been^ 
born.  Merely  to  want  my  Child  makes  me  a  fitting 
mother. 
My  Child  often  is  realer  to  me  than  books  I  read 


The  edge  oj  mist-and-silver  299 

and  walks  I  take  and  the  friend  who  writes  me 
frequent  letters. 

Sometimes  my  Child  is  a  soft  pink  baby  smelling  of 
rain-water,  milk  and  flowers:  lying  close  to  the 
curves  of  my  breasts  in  the  hollow  of  my  arms: 
feeding  soft  insistent  baby  hunger  and  feeding  soft 
strong  living  hunger  of  my  kissing  mother-lips — 
More  often  my  Child  is  a  little  happy- voiced  fellow, 
my  small  brave  boy  three  years  old:  he  clings  to  my 
skirt  with  his  sweet  tiny  hand  as  we  hurry  along  a 
frosty  pavement  in  an  early  December  morning. 
We  live  in  New  York  in  a  little  common  quiet 
apartment  and  are  gratefully  poor,  and  I  work  in  a 
factory  for  a  little  weekly  wage  for  the  living  of  my 
little  fellow  and  me.  Every  day  in  the  early  morning 
we  go  out  to  a  corner  bakery  to  buy  a  long  crisp 
loaf  of  French  bread  for  breakfast.  And  in  the 
December  morning  my  heart  contracts  with  a  sort 
of  happiness  and  a  sort  of  grief  at  the  sound  of  little 
feet  in  stout  shoes  yet  frail  shoes  pattering-pattering 
gaily  along  beside  me  on  the  frosty  flagstones.  We 
start  out  hand-in-hand — his  small  hand  is  wonder- 
fully firm  and  virile— but  presently  I  let  go  his  hand 
as  we  hurry  along,  to  feel  it  instantly  clutch  the 
folds  of  my  work-skirt:  it  pulls  and  drags  at  my 
waistbands  and  my  Heart  together  with  twisted 
sweetness  that  makes  me  ache  from  head  to  foot. 


300  The  edge  of  mist-and-silver 

'Mother,  wait/  he  says  in  his  happy  voice,  *wait 
for  me.'  But  I  hurry  faster.  Always  I  hurry  faster 
when  my  happy  brave  httle  fellow  cries  *Wait, 
mother,'  for  the  sweet  feel  of  that  dragging  at  my 
mother-skirt — 

More  often  my  Child  is  the  little  girl  six  years  old 
of  the  shy  eyes  and  the  sun-kissed  hair  and  the 
firm  child-mouth,  full  of  high  temper  and  strong 
will.    All  over  her  is  need  and  demand  of  her  mother 
to  guard  and  adore  and  cherish  her  every  moment 
of  her  life.    We  are  together  in  a  country  field  with 
oak-trees  in  it,  and  poplars,  and  daisies  and  bluebells 
and  other  field-flowers,  and  it  is  overgrown  with  long 
coarse  fragrant  wild  grass.     The  noonday  sun  is 
bright-hot  and  I  bring  my  Child  there  to  dry  her 
hair,  for  I  have  newly  washed  it  with  a  square  of 
white  soap  and  a  porcelain  bluebird  bowl:   the  feel 
of  her  small  round  wilful  head  was   marvelously 
fulfilling  in  my  cupped  hands.    She  wanders  around 
in  the  hot-brightness  through  the  tall  grass,  gathering 
the    hardy    scentless    field-flowers    with    her    httle 
brown  fingers,  and  she  shakes  back  her  beautiful 
thick  short  damp  curls.    I  sit  on  a  flat  stone  like  a 
Sioux  squaw  and  watch  her.    The  grass  brushes  her 
bare  legs:   the  magic  sun  mixed  with  a  faint  cool 
breeze  plays  upon  her  head:    the  tragic  dehcate 
music  of  rustling  poplar  leaves  comes  down  from 


The  edge  of  mist-and-silver  301 

tree-tops  and  catches  her  in  a  fairy  song-net.  She 
is  always  very  new,  very  incredible,  my  Child. 
She  looks  toward  me  with  her  shy  radiant  eyes  and 
she  says,  *  Mother,  look,  my  hair  is  nearly  dry.' 
Her  hair  is  thick  and  heavy.  In  my  experienced 
subdued  mother-wisdom  I  know  it  will  not  be  dry 
for  an  hour.  I  feel  the  damp  of  her  hair  rheumishly 
keen  all  over  me:  a  menacingness  for  me  to  guard 
her  from:  a  dear  anxiety:  an  ancient  mother-note 
in  the  long  human  gamut  of  sounds. 
— it  is  precious  wearing  racking  colorful  romance  to 
be  her  mother:  each  mother-day  holds  gold-and- 
blue  foreboding:  each  mother-day  holds  thin 
insistent  gold-and-purple  sorrows:  each  mother- 
day  holds  deep  gold-and-gray  care,  incessant  and 
absolute:  an  aching  wealth  of  beauty:  no  more  but 
no  less  than  the  damp  of  her  hair  in  the  noonday 
field.  My  Child! — herself  incessant  and  absolute: 
warm  pure  palpitant  gold-of-my-life — 
Someway  realer  than  books  I  read  and  walks  I 
take  my  Child  clamors  to  be  born. 
My  Child  will  never  be  born  to  any  other  woman. 
While  she  hovers  and  flutters  on  the  edge  of  Mist- 
and-Silver — a  border  edge — there  are  ten  million 
fertile  hot  milk-teeming  bodies  of  women  each 
ready  to  gather  her  in  and  wrap  her  in  delicate- 
sweet  flesh.     Ten  miflion  other  children  hovering 


302  The  edge  of  mist-and-silver 

on  the  edge  will  drop  off  into  the  ten  million  matrix- 
cups — each  woman  mysteriously  a  fitting  mother 
so  only  she  wants  her  baby — though  she  be,  besides, 
a  thief  or  a  traitor  or  a  weakling  or  a  murderer  or  a 
harlot  or  a  drunkard  or  a  fool. 

Let  them  come,  the  ten  million.  The  chrysalid 
children  are  clamoring,  clamoring  always  for  their 
birth:  a  wide  *  melody  unheard.' 
But  my  Child  will  never  drop  over  the  edge  to  any 
woman  but  me.  She  calls  with  veiled  and  dazzling 
flames  of  eagerness  for  her  Birthday:  but  she  will 
await  my  made-readiness  through  a  long  night, 
though  it  should  last  till  the  day-break  of  another  age. 
Dimly  I  weep  for  her,  my  needing-me  Child.  I  weep 
that  she  must  come  to  this  richly-cursed  me.  But  I 
weep  more  that  I  have  not  got  her  in  this  sterile 
now,  where  is  flawed  passionate  wealth  of  intangible 
life-stuff":  but  no  small  round  wilful  head  of  hair  to 
wash:  no  little  fellow's  feet  on  December  flagstones 
and  sweet  dragging  at  my  skirt:  no  soft  pink-baby 
hunger — 

It  is  hunger  I  feel  from  her.  I  feel  her  always 
hungry  where  she  is  and  I  can  give  her  no  nourishing 
— no  warming /ooc?  in  all  my  strange  unfertile  passing 
life! 

It  is  that  less  than  my  empty  arms  that  makes 
blurred  unrests  and  writhings  in  my  Dreaming  Womb. 


A  right  shape  and  size  303 


To-morrow 

SOMETIMES  I  fancy  me  married — a  re- 
sponsible wife,  a  housekeeping  matron: 
with  my  window-sills  full  of  potted  plants. 
I  have  a  woman  quality  which  seems  uxoresque: 
I  am  someway  a  Right  Shape  and  Size  to  be  some- 
body's wife.  My  bodily  and  astral  dimensions 
have  outhnes  apparently  suitable  for  something  in 
the  married-woman  way. 

The  wild  piquance  of  being  myself — who  but  for 
extreme  saneness  would  be  mad — rises  up  and 
smashes  that  concept. 

But  being  a  Right  Shape  and  Size  I  involuntarily 
imagine  it. 

Fleetingly  I  imagine  a  flat  in  the  West  Seventies  in 
New  York,  or  a  bungalow  on  the  Jersey  side,  or 
a  middle-sized  house  in  a  middle-sized  town  in  Middle- 
West  Illinois — whichever  might  happen — with  me 
set  marriedly  down  in  the  midst  of  it  like  a  suitable 
maggot  in  a  suitable  nut.  Suitableness,  diametrically 
opposed  to  Romance,  is  its  keynote. 
I  fancy  me  walking  about  my  married  house  mornings 
after  breakfast  in  a  neat  linen  dress  and  high-heeled 
satin  sHppers:  snipping  dead  leaves  off  my  window- 
sill  plants,  dusting  bits  of  porcelain,  giving  my  maid 
some  tame  household  directions.     My  Body  looks 


304  A  right  shape  and  size 

slender  and  supple  and  newly-married  and  in-the- 
drawing  in  the  linen  house-dress.  The  geometric 
gods  regard  me  with  immense  satisfaction 
as  being  an  exact  proved  theorem.  I  go  to  the 
telephone  to  order  some  Little  Neck  clams  and  some 
vermouth  cocktails  for  dinner,  and  a  roast  and  some 
Brussels  sprouts  and  the  assemblings  of  a  salad: 
and  in  it  I  am  ingrainedly  domestic,  dreadfully 
useful,  a  strong  pillar  of  the  vast  good  nice  world. 
Afternoons  I  go  out  to  a  modiste's  to  fit  a  gown,  or 
to  a  mild  bridge-party  along  with  other  suitable 
women,  or  to  a  matinee  with  a  suitable  neighbor. 
Everything  is  perfectly  right  in  my  insides  and  in 
my  thoughts:  my  thoughts  run  in  little  troughs 
in  which  there  is  no  leakage  or  deviation,  thoughts 
of  a  dreadful  niceness,  thoughts  which  ever  pre- 
suppose potted  plants  on  my  window-sills. 
Evenings  I  go  out  with  my  husband,  or  sit  around 
with  my  husband,  or  take  leave  of  him  for  a  few 
hours  at  the  hall  door. 

My  husband  would  be  the  sort  of  man  that  is  called 
a  Good  Scout.  And  he  would  have  married  me  not 
for  my  wistfulness  or  wickedness  or  weirdness  but 
for  that  I  am  a  proper  Shape  and  Size,  with  a  smooth 
proper  covering  of  flesh,  to  make  a  suitable  sizable 
wife.  And  he  would  be  a  heavy  grapphng  anchor 
to  hold  me  fast  in  an  ocean  of  domesticness. 
Men  of  the  genus  Good  Scout  are  all  fiercely  alike. 


A  right  shape  and  size  305 

All  women,  no  matter  what  their  genus,  are  excep- 
tions to  the  rule.  But  men — rich  men,  poor  men, 
beggar-men,  thieves:  so  only  they  are  Good  Scouts 
— are  of  marvelous  sameness.  It  comes  from  the 
want  of  minute  lifelong  pinpricking  care  of  petticoats 
and  potted  plants — a  detailed  intensely  personal 
sort  of  pain  which  touches  dull  solid  tones  of  in- 
dividuality with  vivid  various  spots  of  color. 
Men  are  made  in  *job  lots'  like  their  own  cravats. 
Their  cravats  will  differ  in  texture  and  color  and 
quality  and  price.  But  each  one  is  innately  necktie. 
Use  it  as  a  garter  or  a  tourniquet  or  a  strangler's 
noose :  it  still  is  a  man's  deadly  necktie.  Its  use  may 
be  ruined  but  its  necktique  is  deathless.  Except 
poets — and  perhaps  scientists — men  are  themselves 
like  that.  They  cannot  get  away  from  the  Adam. 
Nor  can  women  get  away  from  the  Eve.  But  Eve 
was  not  a  type  but  a  somewhat  pleasant  human 
ensemble.  While  Adam  was  a  type  and  a  sufficiently 
nasty  one:  a  rotter  and  a  welcher:  doubtless  the 
Good  Scout  type  of  his  day. 

A  Good  Scout  is  the  sort  of  man  who  if  a  woman 
trusts  him  with  one  one-hundredth  of  her  heart 
will  take  the  whole  heart  and  twist  and  batter  it: 
and  read  the  paper  and  smoke  his  pipe  and  pay  the 
bills:  serenely  unaware. 

Which  is  beside  the  point  in  this.  For  in  this  image 
all  my  marriedness  is  a  thing  of  outer  Shape  and 


3o6  A  right  shape  and  size 

Size  and  Suitableness.  The  odd  but  natural  sequence 
is  that  I  make  an  excellent  wife.  Excellent  is  the 
word.  I  keep  a  neat  house  with  no  dust  left  in  the 
corners  and  no  dead  leaves  on  the  potted  plants. 
My  husband  is  well  looked  after  as  to  breakfasts  and 
dinners  and  bodily  comfort,  and  I  am  rigidly  square 
with  him  and  chastely  true  to  him. 
If,  some  dinnertime,  as  I  sit  spposite  him  in  a  soft 
pretty  chiffon  gown,  my  secret  thoughts  overflow 
their  troughs  and  I  passionately  forget  the  potted 
plants  and  the  window-sills  and  want  horribly  to 
rise  up  and  bloodily  murder  my  husband  for  being 
such  a  Good  Scout:  that  would  be  a  genuinely 
powerless  matter,  a  cobweb  trifle,  compared  with 
my  actual  potent  Shape  and  Size  which  are  so 
suitable  for  a  wife. 

I  make  truly  and  simply  an  excellent  wife. 
— by  God  and  my  Soul-and-bones!    it  would  be 
honester,  finer,  sweeter — more  comjortable  to  be  the 
dirty  beggar-woman  in  the  wet  slippery  streets — 
But  it's   facilely  fancied  because   I   am  of  Right 
Dimensions  to  be  some  Good  Scout's  wife. 
A  curious  subtly  pitfalled  world :  in  it  my  Shape  and 
Size,  and  my  Weight  which  is  also  Right,   could 
betray  me  into  being  an  excellent  wife:  and  by  that 
a  lying  chattel,  an  inexpressibly  damaged  woman. 


Ice-water,  corrosive  acid  and  human  breath  307 


To-morrow 

I   HAVE  love  for  two  towns.    One  is  this  Butte 
that  I  tiredly  love  inside  me.     And  the  other 
is  New  York  that  I  smoothly  love  with  all  my 
surfaces. 

It  is  some  years — a  little  lump  of  years — since  I 
have  seen  New  York:  and  it  is  two  thousand  miles 
away.  So  I  see  and  feel  its  hard  sweet  lurid  mag- 
netism now  ten  times  sharper  than  when  I  lived  in  it. 
But  I  felt  it  sudden  and  sharp  at  every  turn  then. 
A  surface  emotion  which  hits  one's  flesh  and  spreads 
wide  over  one's  area  is  more  exciting  than  a  spirit 
emotion  which  pierces  inward  at  one  tiny  point: 
an  ice  shower-bath  on  the  white  skin  is  more  anguish- 
ing than  an  ice-water  drink  down  the  red  throat. 
The  spirit  emotion  lives  longer  and  works  more 
damage  and  buries  itself  at  last  in  proud  shaded 
soul-reserves.  The  surface  emotion  stays  always  on 
the  surface  and  lives  actively  in  the  front  of  one's 
senses  and  musings. 

The  feel  of  New  York  is  a  mixture  of  ice-water,  a 
corrosive  acid  and  human  breath  sweeping  someway 
warmish  against  one's  flesh. 

It  is  immensely  ungentle,  New  York:  immensely 
human:  immensely  intriguing  to  all  one's  selves. 
It  is  too  big  to  have  prejudices  and  traditions  of 


3o8  Ice-water,  corrosive  acid  and  human  breath 

locality:   so  it  leaves  its  dwellers  free,  by  ones  and 

multitudes,  to  be  human  beings. 

In  South  Bend  and  Toledo  and  Beloit  and  St.  Paul 

and  all  the  tight-built  inland  towns  they  murder 

you  with  narrowness  and  harshness  and  rancorous 

ill-will:    they  are  scowlingly  annoyed  with  you  for 

making  them  murder  you. 

In  New  York  they  murder  you  with  a  large  soft 

wave   of  indifferent   insolence — no   annoyance,    no 

friction.    New  York  eats  you  as  it  eats  its  dinner, 

rather  liking  you. 

And  my  love  for  New  York  is  made  of  liking:  a 

plaisance  of  liking. 

made  of  liking:  a  plaisance  of  liking. 

I   like  New  York  with  a  charmed  restfulness  for 

varied  things  in  it:    subways,  and  Fourth  Avenue, 

and  the  River,  and  Fifth  Avenue  on  a  sunny  October 

afternoon,  and  the  statue  of  Nathan  Hale,  and  old 

cockroachy  downtown  buildings,  and  the  soft  rich 

whelming  creamy  boiling-chocolate  fragrance  from 

the  Huyler  factory  in  Irving  Place.     And  mostly 

I  like  it  for  the  people  in  it — People — Persons — 

People:  they  are  human  beings. 

In    the    inland    towns    people    are    half-afraid    of 

thoughts,   half-afraid  of  spoken  words,   half-afraid 

of  each  other,  half-afraid  of  the  fact  of  being  human. 

In  New  York  they  are  not  afraid  of  any  humanness. 


Ice-water,  corrosive  acid  and  human  breath  309 

Even  when  they  are  in  themselves  craven-cowardly, 
cowardly  enough  to  turn  their  own  stomachs,  they 
still  turn  their  humanness  unfearfully  face-outward 
like  upturned  faces  of  a  pack  of  cards. 
An  Italian  organ-grinder  grinding  out  his  loud 
fierce  music  in  a  long  deep  New  York  side-street  is 
a  human  organ-grinder:  he  bestows  his  rasped 
melody  widely  on  everybody  in  ear-shot,  not 
individually — since  all  around  him  is  a  spreading 
world  of  strangers — but  jointly.  So  it  feels-Iike. 
A  beggar-woman  at  a  subway-entrance  with  a 
whine  and  a  dirty  face  and  the  deadly  black  cape 
and  chicken-coopish  beggar-odor  is  a  human  beggar- 
woman.  She  throws  out  an  inner  savor  of  herself 
like  a  soiled  aura  on  all  collectively  who  pass  her. 
Each-and-all  of  New  York  by  tolerating  and  owning 
her  partakes  of  her  mean  human  essence. 
A  stout-hearted  worn-bodied  Jew  factory  girl 
working  at  a  hard  greasy  little  machine  day  after 
day  gives  all  New  York  her  bit  of  young  virtue 
which  is  hardy  and  heroic  and  unaware:  the  whole 
Island  of  looseness  and  vice  has  an  equal  gift  of 
impregnable  surprising  sordid  purity  thriving  on 
sixes  and  sevens  of  poor  dollars-a-week. 
All  of  it  is  because  New  York  is  one  Large  Condition 
made  of  human  breaths  and  the  worn  scrapings  of 
tired  Youth  rather  than  one  large  town  made  of 


3 1 0  Ice-water y  corrosive  acid  and  human  breath 

individuals  and  stone  houses. 

And  in  that  is  an  odd  enchantment  for  me  who  am 
born  and  grown  in  the  places  of  Half-fear  with  an 
old  isolated  whole  fear  always  on  me. 
In  New  York  I  am  a  partaker  of  that  smooth  manna 
of  humanness  as  I  am  of  the  air  and  the  sunshine 
and  the  little  black  specks  of  coal-soot:  partly  from 
choice,  partly  willy-nilly,  partly  in  the  sweeping 
unanalyzable  pell-mell-ness  of  massed  human  nature. 
And  it  is  in  New  York  I  have  those  strangest  things 
of  all:  human  friendships.  Not  many  friendships 
and  not  of  spent  familiarities :  for  I  don't  like  actual 
human  beings  too  much  around  me.  But  yet  friend- 
ships made  of  the  edges  of  thoughts  and  vivid  pathos 
and  pregnant  odds  and  ends  of  nervous  human 
flesh  and  fire. 

It  is  in  New  York  I  go  to  the  apartment  of  a  Friend 
at  the  end  of  an  afternoon.  In  the  apartment  are 
some  persons  having  tea,  men  and  women.  The 
Friend  greets  me  at  the  door.  She  wears  maybe 
a  dress  of  thin  dark  and  light  silk,  shaped  in  the 
quaint  outlandish  fashion  of  the  hour.  And  she  has 
shrewd  kindly  eyes  like  a  Rembrandt  portrait,  and 
a  worn  New-York-ish  Latin-ish  brain  and  heart 
both  of  which  are  made  of  steel,  sparkle  and  the 
very  plain  red  meat  of  living.  She  says,  *HeIIo- 
Mary-Mac-Lane,  *    and   clasps   my   hand,    and   we 


Ice-watery  corrosive  acid  and  human  breath  3 1 1 

exchange  a  glance  of  no  real  understanding  at  all 
but   suggesting   warmed   challenge   of  personality, 
and  an  oblique  sweet  call  of  depth  to  depth,  and  of 
friendship  which  by  mere  force  of  preference  and  of 
our  separate  quality  and  calibre  is  true  rather  than 
false.     So  close  and  no  closer  may  friendship  be. 
And  friendship,  with-all,  is  closer  than  any  love. 
It  is  the  closest  human  beings  ever  come  to  meeting. 
In  a  New  York  doorway  I,  made  in  broad  loneliness 
of  self,  get  suddenly  companion- warmed  at  the  little 
pleasant  twisted  fire  of  someone  else. 
It  might  be  so  in  some  other  town,  even  Beloit, 
but  it  feels  only  like  New  York  to  me. 
I  go  in  the  room  where  the  others  are  and  they  say, 
*  Hello-Mary-Mac-Lane, '  and  I  drink  some  tea  and 
listen  and  talk  in  fragments  of  half-meanings.    And 
I   get   warmed   and   half-warmed   and   cooled   and 
slightly   scorched    in   the   easeful    unevenly-heated 
humanness  of  the  women  and  men  sitting  around. 
In  the  inland  towns  they  throw  their  thoughts  and 
ideas  at  you  at  tea-time,  inland  thoughts  and  ideas, 
which  hit  you  and  then  drop  off  like  little  pebbles 
and  nuts  and  hard  green  apples. 
In  New  York  they  throw  those  things  in  the  form 
of  long  ribbons,  heated  from  being  worn  next  their 
skin,  which  fly  out  and  wrap  around  your  skin: 
pleasantly  or  foolishly  or  fancifully. 


312  Ice-water,  corrosive  acid  and  human  breath 

The  point  of  it  is  that  nobody  is  afraid  of  that. 

It  is  nothing  fulfilling,   nothing  satisfying.     It  is 

merely  human.     It  is  half-Iyric. 

It  reassures  me  as  a  person:  it  makes  me  feel  human 

in  all  my  surfaces. 

Which  are  harder  to  humanize,  in  everybody,  than 

any  deepest  deeps. 

And  it  is  therefore  with  all  my  surfaces,  smoothly 

and  restfully,  I  love  New  York. 


Rhythm  313 


To-morrow 

NOW  and  again  I  think  I  catch  some  truth  by 
the  sweat  of  its  Rhythm. 
Often  I  read  the  Beatitudes  in  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount  and  feel  their  truth  in  the  blood- 
sweating  tune  of  their  Rhythm — Rhythm  unspeak- 
able and  ecstatic. 

The  prophet  Christ  believed  himself  divine  and  was 
all  Rhythm  in  his  utterances:  and  so  sounds  true 
as  the  scheme  of  digestion  and  the  laws  of  hygiene. 
He  said,  Blessed  are  they  that  mourn :  for  they  shall 
be  comforted. 

Everybody  who  has  tried  it  knows  that  to  be  true 
with  the  flawless  Rhythmic  truth  of  health  and 
illness. 

Mourn  frightfully  a  day  and  the  next  day  will  be  a 
day  of  soothed  warmth  and  quiet  like  a  grateful 
pitiful  heat  current  in  the  breast.  Mourn  a  week 
and  that  will  come  the  week  following.  Mourn  a 
year  and  the  next  year  will  be  the  year  of  peace. 
For  anguish:  peace.  For  peace:  anguish.  It  never 
fails. 

The  great  thing  lacking  in  Christ,  the  sense  of 
humor,  permitted  his  perfect  personal  Rhythm. 
Humor  oddly  wants  Rhythm.  The  human  race  is 
made  in  Rhythm  like  its  beating  heart:  but  humor 


314  Rhythm 

is  an  *  extra.'  Everybody  is  so  full  of  lies  that 
humor,  an  'extra/  always  wonderfully  appetizing 
and  out  of  season,  and  inexplicably  God-given, 
feels  like  a  great  keystone  of  the  race.  So  it  is: 
but  in  a  lying  race.  And  Christ  in  his  beautiful 
dual  role  would  lack  humor.  As  a  God  come  among 
the  human  race  to  save  it,  knowing  it  as  he  did:  his 
measureless  worldly  wisdom  being  paramount  even 
to  his  gentleness:  his  mind  and  his  personal  tenor 
could  be  set  only  in  intense  terrific  gloom. 
The  Rhythm  in  the  Beatitudes  is  equal  Rhythm  of 
sense  and  Rhythm  of  sound:  Rhythm  of  music  and 
Rhythm  of  meaning.  Equally,  half  and  half. 
The  most  Rhythm  thing  in  it  is:  Blessed  are  the  pure 
in  heart:  for  they  shall  see  God. 
I  feel  it  soft-prickling  just  under  my  skin.  Rhythm 
— Rhythm  and  ecstasy! 

I  have  read  it  many  times  since  I  was  a  child :  till  I  know 
it  in  my  brain,  in  my  Soul,  in  my  hands,  in  my  breast,  in 
my  throat,  in  my  forehead,  in  my  gray  eyes,  in  my  ach- 
ing left  foot.  I  know  it  and  feel  it  by  its  Rhythm. 
There  is  barbarous  justice  in  it.  It  cuts  everybody 
off  from  seeing  God. 

Pure  in  heart  I  take  to  mean  pure  in  motive.    A 
fool  has  an  equal  chance  with  a  philosopher:  a  harlot 
with  a  horse-thief:   a  nasty  rag-picker  with  a  small 
sweet  child.    But  none  is  pure  in  motive. 
Of  other  persons  I  don't  judge.    But  me  I  know  to  be 


Rhythm  315 

murderously  un-pure  of  heart. 
If  I  could  open  a  window  or  unlock  a  door  with  only 
the  simple  mechanical  motive  in  the  act —  But  I 
can*t.  There's  a  romantic  impurity  in  even  the  look 
of  my  hand  as  it  touches  the  window-sash  or  the  door- 
key.  There's  a  pervasive  delicate  infusion  of  impure 
motive  all  over  me.  Soul  and  bones,  as  I  perform  the 
act.  It  is  one  curse  in  the  Necklace  which  God  him- 
self bestowed  on  me  so  long  ago. 
It  is  not  my  fault  that  I  am  un-pure  in  heart. 
And  it  is  not  God's.  It  is  a  comfort  to  me  that  I 
can  reason  out  that  it  is  not  God's  fault.  He  knew 
I  needed  the  Necklace  and  each  blue-green  stone  in 
it  to  rhyme  and  balance  me.  In  the  wide  surpris- 
ingness  of  the  universe  everything  will  be  rhymed  and 
balanced.  In  me,  being  savagely  complex,  that  bal- 
ancing took  a  bit  of  doing:  hence  my  unusual  Necklace. 
It  comforts  me  that  I  can  reach  that  analytic  point. 
It  leaves  me  a  lightning  conviction  that  God  is  worth 
seeing. 

And  if  a  day  dawns  for  me  when  I  can  open  a  door 
with  no  ulterior  motive:  thinking  only  of  the  door 
and  the  fine  small  muscular  power  of  smooth  hand 
and  supple  wrist  given  me  to  open  it:  thinking  only 
that  I  want  to  get  the  door  open:  then  back  of  that 
door  I  know  I  shall  see  God! 

It  is  so  written  in  that  barbarous  blood-sweating 
worldly  Rhythm  on  the  Mount. 


3i6  A  prayer-feeling 


To-day 

SO  it  is  finished:  and  I  have  oddly  Failed. 
I  have  slyly  Succeeded  and  oddly  Failed  in 
equal  degree. 
I  have  Failed  because  I  am  too  cowardly  and  too 
weak  and  too  dishonest  to  write  certain  bruised  and 
self-accusing  places  in  my  Soul  and  in  my  Heart 
and  in  my  Mind  which  rightly  come  in  the  scope  of 
this:  there  are  the  Stern  and  Delicate  Voices  one 
closes  one's  ears  against:  there  are  the  starry  grimy 
Actualities  one  drops  from  one's  hands:  there  are 
the  Thoughts  one  Does  Not  Think.  Yet  and  yet: 
they  too  are  in  it,  hanging  cobweb-ish  on  my  wordings 
and  colons. 

It  is  not  a  strong  tale,  and  that  is  very  well.    This 
book  is  less  I-written  than  it  is  I-myself.    And  Just 
Beneath  The  Skin  no  person  is  strong:  not  Theodore 
Roosevelt,  true  fearless  American:    not  Bonaparte, 
splendid  tyrant:    not  Joan  of  Arc,  titanic  martyr. 
They  are  strong  in  their  depths  and  strong  on  the 
outside.     So  are  many  others.     So  am  I,  I  think. 
But  just  under  the  skin  all  who  are  human  are 
roundly  weak. 
Roundly  weak,  every  one. 
And  with  that,  in  my  case,  False. 
This  primarily  is  the  picture  of  one  who  is  made- 


A  prayer-feeling  317 

False:    False  from  her  fingertips  to  her  innermost 
concept. 

It  is  belike  because  of  that  that  this,  as  itself,  oddly 
Fails. 

It  is  as  if  I  have  made  a  portrait  not  of  Me,  but  of  a 
Room  I  have  just  quitted.  My  Gloves  are  left  on  a 
chair:  my  Hat  is  left  on  a  couch:  my  taken-off 
Shoes  are  left  on  the  floor:  my  faint-smelling  Hand- 
kerchief is  dropped  by  the  door:  my  round  ribboned 
Garter  is  hanging  on  the  door-knob:  my  Breath  is  in 
the  air:  my  Grief  is  on  the  walls  clinging  like  smoke: 
my  flat  Despair  is  on  the  petunia-leaves  in  the  win- 
dow: my  fragrant  Horridness  lingers  in  the  curtains. 
I  am  not  there!  But  I — /  have  just  Quitted  that 
Room! — 
Therein  I  have  slyly  Succeeded. 

My  feeling  at  my  book's-end  is  a  prayer-feeling, 

both  frantic  and  quiet:    God  have  mercy  on  me  I 

but  not  unless  you  want  to. 

And  I  feel  barbarous  and  utterly  solitary,  solitary 

from  here  to  Jericho,  solitary  from  here  to  the  cool  stars. 

There  comes   off  the  grim  gray  east  hills  a  soft 

whelming  taste  of  Sunset,  bloody  and  full  of  human 

marrows. 

And  I  feel  a  need  of  great  Pain  or  great  Sin  to  make 

and  break  me,  Soul  and  bones. 


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